The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) will hasten to build scientific observatory networks throughout the country and collect data on the Earth and its ecological systems.

CAS President Lu Yongxiang said at an academic conference Monday that scientific observatories are important research bases for stimulating research innovation.

Lu said the CAS regards the observatory networks as an inseparable part of its strategic innovation system, which hopes to bring about scientific breakthroughs.

In the next five years, the CAS aims to construct various long-term ecological research networks to create a seamless and integrated continuum making ecological informatics possible.

Fu Bojie, director of the CAS Bureau of Science and Technology for the Environment and Resources, said the proposed networks include ecological and environmental monitoring networks in eastern cities, climatic environment observation networks, Sun-to-Earth space environment observation networks, offshore marine observation networks, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau observatories, automatic observation and live data-transmission systems, and space observation networks for Earth.

Scientific observatories are vitally important for the scientific community to carry out research on ecological restoration, environmental protection, agricultural development, disaster reduction and sustained exploitation of natural resources, Fu said.

Since its founding more than five decades ago, the CAS has established over 130 scientific observatories nationwide, which work for geosciences, biology, space environmental science, rock mechanics, astronomy and acoustics.

In 1988, the CAS started to build the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, a nationwide ecological observatories system with uniform operations and standardized equipment.

(Xinhua News Agency June 9, 2005)