Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, CAS (IMHE), from the perspectives of the upper Yangtze River and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, has been engaging in fundamental, strategic and frontior researches on mountain hazards, mountain environment and mountain sustainable development to meet the needs of China’s mountain area development and ecological environment construction, with the objectives of disclosing mountain hazards formation and mountain environment degradation mechanism, illuminating moutain development strategies and regional development patterns, offering scientific and technological support for national decision makers.

During the past four decades, focusing on the three main fields of mountain hazards, mountain environment and mountain sustainable development, IMHE has kept working on long-term monitor, experiment, thoery analysis, technique development and project demonstration, finished around 1,000 fruitful national and local projects, solved vital scientific problems on environment hazards and project security, and in hence been awarded by national and local governments for hundreds of research achievements.

l　Mountain Hazards

Extensive and intensive researches related to mountain hazards include mountain hazard formation and evolution mechanism, mainly on debris flow and landslide,etc, risk evaluation, disaster prevention and alarm, and so forth.

1)  Debris flow subject has been set up and a scientific research system has been improved in the form of combined outside monitor and inside simulation.

2)  Disaster decrease and prevention system has been put forward, covering mountain linear projects (road, railway, tube,etc), urban area, and large-scale water resource projects.

3)  Hundreds of landslide prevention demonstration projects have been accomplished and successfully applied in projects like Tibet Road Main Stem, Long Yangxia Hydropower Station, Ertan Reservior, Three-Gorge Reservoir Area, Water Transfer South to North, Gas Transfer West to East, Oil Transfer West to East, and Jiuzhaigou and Wenchuan Earthquake Area Restoration.

4)   In 1999, IMHE participated in an international aid activity for Venezuela’s super debris flow and its disaster prevention proposal was approved and appraised highly by Venezuela congress.

l　Mountain Environment

IMHE has achieved remarkable break through in researches such as mountain environment degradation and slope erosion mechanism, degraded environment restoration, and adjusting & controlling mode for mountain ecological system benign recycle, etc, mainly focusing on those important ecological projects like Three-gorge Project, Ecological Construction in the Upper Yangtze River, National Ecological Barrier in Tibet, etc.

1)   mountain environment researches include environmental impact assessment (EIA) system for large-scale water resource project, the upper Yangtze River shelterbelt ecological project system, evaluation method and its system for river basin ecological function, ecological restoration mode for fragile area, and tentative demonstration of sloping soil erosion and non-point source pollution control.

2)  Over thirty reports on recommendation and consultation have drawn central government’s attention and been adopted by relevant departments. For instance, EIA Report on Three-gorge Water Resource Project is an ecological and environmental authoritative reference for the National People's Congress; National Ecological Security Barrier Protection and Construction Program in Tibet has been approved and implemented by the Standing Committee of State Council of China.

l　Mountain Sustainable Development

Extensive and intensive analysis is applied in studies on resource and environmental carrying capacity, and on mountain development challenges and strategies (e.g. development guidence by region type strategy, strategy adapted to local conditions, ecological construction countermeasure strategy and integrated harmonizing strategy, etc), embodied specifically in objective, industrial category and spacial development.

1)  As an indispensable part of China’s national situation report, Mountain Region Development Strategy of China, 2003 from IMHE is a great new exploration which could offer valuable information for decision makers in the aspect of well-off society construction in mountain area.

New era brings IMHE new opportunities and new challenges in the mean time, which could aspire IMHE climbing science mountain continuously in order to make greater contributions to new mountain region construction in the 21st century.