The Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center of Ecology was approved to be established in 2012 during 12th Five-year period. Relying on the national key disciplines of ecology and the four first-level doctoral of biological sciences, environmental sciences and geosciences, post-doctoral mobile stations, and the Key Laboratory of Vegetation Ecology of the Ministry of Education, State Environment Protection Key Laboratory of Wetland Ecology and Vegetation Restoration, the Key Laboratory of Ecological Restoration and Ecosystem Management in Jilin Province and Jilin Key Laboratory of Animal Resource Conservation and Utilization jointly set up to provide a good platform for the training of regional ecological environment protection, ecological undergraduate innovative talents and applied talents.

The center takes the national key discipline “Ecology” as the core, and the goal is to improve the quality of personnel training and innovation ability. The center upholds “cultivation-orientation, exploit the potential talent, collaborative innovation and practice education” to explore the new mechanism of co-cultivating ecological talents between institutes and universities, and play a lad and demonstrate role in the construction of universities and the teaching reform of ecological teaching. Currently, a total of 65 staff, including 32 professors, 20 associate professors, 8 lecturers, 3 post-doctoral students, 2 postdocs, 36 Ph.D. students and 68 postgraduate students. The director of the center is Professor Feng Jiang and the deputy director is Sun Keping Associate Professor. As of 2016, 68 Ph.D. students and 215 postgraduate students have been trained.

Research Directions

1. Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology: Investigation and monitoring of regional animal resources, behavioral ecology and genetic evolution, resource development and utilization, as well as the establishment of animal specimen information sharing platform and digital museum.

2. Plant ecology and evolutionary ecology: The grassland in northeastern China is the main research object, mainly studying the structure and function of grassland vegetation distribution, dynamic succession, biological productivity, energy flow and material circulation, as well as the co-evolution relationship between plants and animals.

3. Wetland Ecology and Vegetation Restoration: Mainly studying the succession of wetland vegetation, biodiversity, hydrological processes and ecological effects, as well as ecological engineering techniques and application promotion of wetland ecosystem restoration and restoration.

4. Pollution Ecology and Risk Assessment: It mainly studies the mechanism of transformation and removal of various pollutants in water system and the joint repair and mechanism of various pollutants. It also studies the risk assessment and management of natural disasters, including disaster monitoring and early warning, risk assessment, Risk prevention and emergency management.

In recent years, the Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center undertakes a total of more than 60 national-level scientific research projects of the key projects of National Natural Science Foundation of China, major research project nurture projects and general projects, and 45 teaching reform projects at all levels. It won the Science and Technology Achievement of Jilin Province, Jilin Province Teaching Achievement Award and other awards more than 20 items. Successfully declared 29 National University Students Innovation Projects, of which 9 were state-level awards, 2 provincial awards. More than 100 SCI papers have been published in periodicals such as PNAS, Nature Communication and Animal Behavior, and over 20 papers in teaching and research have been published in journals of provincial level or above.

Representative Research Results and Main Features

1. Ecology is one of the disciplines with the strongest vitality and the fastest development speed science currently. It has the characteristics of multidisciplinary comprehensiveness. For a long time, the ecological discipline in our school has already crossed and penetrated with different levels of biology, environmental science and geography in teaching and research, forming a strong cluster of superior disciplines. Therefore, it is one of the main features that integrates the high-quality resources of the three first-level disciplines of "biology", "environmental science and engineering" and "geography" and established the "open, integrated and efficient" ecological scientific research and experimental teaching center in our center.

2. In response to the different needs of the state for ecologists, the center has established different modes of collaborative innovation to cultivate new talents: International exchange and cooperation collaborative innovation of personnel training mode; collaboration and innovation of the school personnel training mode; with the industry and enterprises to cultivate a new mechanism for ecological talents. The establishment of these models is conducive to cultivating innovative, applied, complex and skilled personnel, providing talent support for economic and social development.

3. Constructing an ecological practical teaching system of "Basic Skills Training - Improving Professional Skills - Innovating Scientific Research". In basic experimental teaching, constructing experimental teaching content system based on four modules, which is Form and Structure, Physiology and Biochemistry, Cell and Genetics, Ecology and Environment. In the course of internship, trainee and field practice, starting from the ecological discipline as a whole, according to the different ecosystems of forests, grasslands, wetlands, lakes and other areas, optimize the design of internship lines and internship content to broaden the field internship content. In scientific research innovation, we should cultivate and enhance students' scientific literacy by participating in teachers' scientific research projects and declaring scientific research projects at national, university and experimental centers.