The News from the National Science and Technology Information System (https://service.most.gov.cn/) show that the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) obtains the approval of the Ministry of Science and Technology to undertake a National Key R&D Program on Protection and Restoration of Typical Fragile Ecosystems.

The program entitled "Techniques and Demonstrative Research on Forest Ecological Product Supply Ability Improvement in Northeast China" will be carried out by researchers from nine institutes and universities including IAE (the leading research institute), Northeast Forestry University and the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology of CAS. The chief scientist of the program is Prof. HE Xingyuan from the Urban Forestry Group of IAE.

This program is an update of the program "Techniques and Demonstration of Forest Conservation and Forest Bio-Resource Development and Utilization in Northeast China," one of IAE's National Key R&D Programs during the 13th "Five-Year" period.

Guided by the ecological thoughts such as "Green Mountains are Gold Mountains" and "Forests are water reservoirs, grain depots, money vaults and carbon pools," this program focuses on solving forest quality problems in Northeast China, for example, poor ecosystem integrity, low ecosystem stability, low-functioning of the shelterbelts, and the dilemma of development and conservation of forests.

The program aims to study the formation and maintenance mechanisms of forest ecological products in Northeast China, assess forest restoration potential, develop techniques to achieve synergistic improvement of two functionalities of forest ecosystems, i.e., the forest ecological service (e.g., carbon sequestration by vegetation and soil, water conservation, biodiversity maintenance), and the supply of forest material products (e.g., food and medicinal herbs). It also aims to accelerate the positive succession of degraded forests, form a sustainable development paradigm that integrates ecological restoration and afforestation, improve the functioning of forests as both ecological shields and ecological product supplier.

Prof. HE Xingyuan, Prof. YU Jinghua and Prof. Yang Kai of IAE will be in charge of the synergistic improvement of yield of ecological products, the R&D and demonstration of ecological technics for processing material products, and the research on the formation and maintenance mechanisms of ecological products, respectively.