The Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences released a column article entitled "Qingyuan Ker Towers: Temperate Secondary Forest Ecosystem Monitoring & Research Platform" (hereinafter referred to as: Ker Towers) on its third issue, 2021. The special column was entitled "Key Science and Technology Infrastructure at Field Research Stations of the Chinese Academy of Sciences."  

Chen Yiyu, member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, former director of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and former vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, wrote a preface to the column, entitled "Equipping CAS field research stations with advanced equipment and enhancing capacity building of these stations in scientific and technological innovation." Academician Chen spoke highly of Ker Towers' overall design, hardware facilities and research objectives. He said, "Qingyuan Station over-fulfilled the project tasks about constructing key scientific and technological infrastructure at the CAS field station. With integrated multiple advanced scientific facilities, the Ker Towers can accurately obtain forest structure and function data in real-time at multiple ecological scales. The Ker Towers were built with multidisciplinary theories and methods, which can be used to explore the frontier scientific issues of forest ecosystem ecology.” 

President Zhang Yaping pointed out that the Key Science and Technology Infrastructure Construction Project carried out at the field stations of CAS is a major project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the field of resources and environment. He encouraged scientists working at IAE and Qingyuan station to make full use of the Ker Towers, maintain the facilities well, update scientific layout, build up to more significant achievements, and serve major national needs on ecological civilisation construction. 

Integrated with hydrological observational network, permanent forest observation plots and interdisciplinary techniques such as remote sensing, eddy flux, dendrometry and forest informatics, the Ker Towers can be used to carry out multiple types of research at multiple ecological scales. For example, the research platform can accurately obtain the three-dimensional structure of the forest. Base on a newly developed method for monitoring carbon-nitrogen-water and trace gas fluxes in complex terrains, the Ker Towers can be used to study the responses of forest carbon-nitrogen-water cycling to global changes, clarify forest hydrological processes and the driving mechanisms, and provide theoretical support for forest structure regulation, forest function optimisation, and the national carbon neutrality policy. 

Before the project was started, IAE and Campbell Scientific reached a strategic cooperation intention to establish CAS-CSI Joint Laboratory of Research and Development for Monitoring Forest Fluxes of Trace Gases and Isotope Elements (Ker Joint Lab for short). The towers locating in the temperate secondary forest is the core facility of the Ker Joint Lab. That's why it was named as Ker Towers. The teams working on the research platform will make full use of Ker Towers and the resources of Ker Joint Lab, focusing on the national needs on structure regulation, functional recovery and carbon neutrality in secondary forests, enhancing the international influence of the research platform, making the Ker Joint Lab to be a "Bell Laboratory in the field of forest research," and contributing to the Construction of Ecological Civilisation and the Beautiful China Initiative.