The First International Cooperation Research Unit of Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography Starts up

In September 2009, Professor Charles Louis, the vice chancellor of University of California, Riverside, USA, with his colleagues, visited the Institute. During the period of their visiting, Sino-USA workshop on  Arid Land Ecology  was held. In the workshop the issue of the response of ecological ecosystem and water resources to global climate change in arid land was widely and deeply communicated. A Cooperative Memo of establishing International Center of Arid Land Ecology (Hereinafter referred as Center) by both parties was signed. The main objective of the Center is to strengthen and promote the cooperation and communication in the fields of arid land ecology and environmental sciences, to carry out joint researches on inland river basin and global climate change, to construct innovative groups of arid land ecology. The Center is the first research unit established by the Institute with foreign country.

Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography have invested one million Chinese Yuan for the Center to run at the initial period in 2010. Under the support of the Center, three academic communicative activities with mutual visit (including 14 people) were carried out. The Center will perform Exchange of Doctor Training between Institute and the University of California, Riverside.

Recently, the deputy director of the Center, Professor Larry Li, University of California, Riverside, with other three colleagues, visited the Institute. They presented academic reports, respectively, and with the researchers of the Institute discussed the research frontiers of arid land ecosystem and environmental problems. Both parties of the Centre clarified that a material joint research will be performed recently. The main purpose of the Centre is to establish an international high-lever research group promoting the researches of arid land ecology and environmental sciences.