On March 17th, the kick-off conference for the national major project on global change “Studies on Carbon Cycle Key Processes and its Coupling with Climate System” was held in Beijing. Eight experts in global change, including Academician Xu Guanhua and Fu Bojie from CAS, and over 40 major researchers from Division of Major Research Program, Department of Basic Research, MOST, Academy of Tsinghua University and Center for Earth System Science attended this conference.

On the behalf of project team, Lin Guanghui, the chief scientist of the project gave a detailed introduction of the project, including its scientific basis, target, research content, research programs, as well as its management and progress. Leaders of the sub-projects elaborated on their respective projects. The experts offered their suggestions about focusing on key scientific issues, how to overcome difficulties, and emphasized key points.

“Studies on Carbon Cycle Key Processes and its Coupling with Climate System” is carried out by Tsinghua University, Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University of Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Institute of Botany, and Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, CAS. This project focuses mainly on key processes of carbon cycles and development of a carbon cycle coupled global climate model. There are four main focuses including key biogeochemical processes of carbon cycles in land-ocean interfaces, development of new land and ocean carbon cycle models based on ecological processes, development of carbon cycle coupled global climate model, and evaluations of carbon cycle-climate interactions and the sensitivity of the earth system.