On February 26th, the Conference on Liaoning Science and Technology (S&T) Awards was held in Shenyang.

On January 17-18, 2019, the seminar on “Forest Nitrogen (N) Cycle and Its Response to Global Change: Multi-site Networking and Model Simulation” was held at the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The total area of China’s Windbreak and Sand-Fixation Forests has increased by 154% after 40 years of construction of the Three-North Shelterbelt Program (TNSP). China's desertification area has greatly declined since 2000 and TNSP contributes to the reduction of desertification by around 15 percent.

On November 23, 2018, at the invitation of Prof. Edith BAI and associate Prof. WANG Chao from the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE), the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Biochemistry Group of IAE, Professor Andreas Richter of the University of Vienna, Austria, paid an academic visit to IAE.

From November 8 to 9, 2018, the 213th Shuangqing Forum of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) was held in Shenyang. The theme of this forum was “Key Scientific Issues of Demand-Oriented Forestry Science”. The forum was co-sponsored by the Department of Life Sciences, the Department of Chemistry and the Policy Bureau of NSFC, and organized by the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Academician ZHANG Shouqi and Academician JIANG Jianchun of the Chinese Academy of Forestry (CAF), and Prof. ZHU Jiaojun of IAE jointly served as the chairman of the forum. More than 40 experts and scholars from CAS, CAF, universities or other research institutions attended the forum.

Invited by Dr. ZHOU Xinhua, director of Ker Joint Laboratory for Forest Trace Gas and Isotope Flux Monitoring and Research (a lab co-established on May 15th, 2018 by the Institute of Applied Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Campbell Scientific Inc., referred to as ‘Ker Lab’ hereinafter), a group of five people from Campbell Scientific Inc. (the world-renowned instrument supplier in the fields of meteorology, hydrology and ecology), including Mr. Thomas Newman, Campbell Scientific Director for Asian Affairs, Ms. Emily Fu, head of Campbell Scientific China, Ms. Emma Feng, manager of the Department of Environmental Affairs of Campbell Scientific China, and Dr. ZHENG Ning, application scientist of Campbell Scientific China as well as member of Ker Lab, visited the Qingyuan Forest Ecosystem Research Station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (referred to as “Qingyuan Station” hereinafter) on October 23, 2018.

On October 24th, the Three-North Shelterbelt Conference in the parallel session of the 4th International Congress on Planted Forests was held in Beijing with the theme of “Forty years Construction of Three-North Program - Approaching Green Development”. The parallel conference was jointly sponsored by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration of China (NFGA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and organized by the Northwest North and Northeast Shelterbelt Construction Bureau of NFGA (hereinafter referred to as the “Three-North Bureau”) and the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) of CAS. More than 300 people including experts and scholars in the field of protective forestry as well as the constructors and managers of the Three-North Shelterbelt Program attended the conference.

The English academic journal Ecological Processes, which is affiliated with the Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been officially accepted by Clarivate (formerly Thomson Reuters) for indexing in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI).

On September 22, 2018, "Thirty Years of China’s Landscape Ecology and Mr. XIAO Duning's 60 Years of Scientific Research Symposium" was held at the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The symposium was hosted by IAE and co-sponsored by the China Branch of the International Association for Landscape Ecology as well as the Landscape Ecology Committee of the Ecological Society of China (ESC). It was launched to sum up and review the development of landscape ecology in China and to guide the future development direction for this discipline.