In December 2013, General Assembly of the United Nations officially designated December 5 as World Soil Day (WSD), aiming to make people aware of the importance of healthy soil and promote sustainable soil resource management. The theme of the sixth WSD in 2019 is "stopping soil erosion and saving our future".

The European Journal of Soil Science (EJSS), as an authoritative Journal in Soil Science with a history of over 100 years, selected 15 important papers published in recent years for an online special issue to promote and support the WSD activity. The research result of the team led by Associate Professor Wang Xia from Lanzhou University was selected for the online issue. This study focused on the typical fragile ecological area in the Western Qinling Mountains and discussed the effects of natural vegetation restoration andartificialplanting activities on the stability of soil structure in geological hazard-prone regions. The work was published by EJSS in 2018 entitled "A comparison of the effects of natural vegetation regrowth with a plantation scheme on soil structure in ageological hazard-prone region".

At present, the team has published a number of influential papers on soil environmental change and ecological restoration in the Western Qinling Mountains (Wang et al., 2019, STILL; Wang et al., 2019, GEODER; Zhao et al., 2019, Journal of Ecology). These results provide important scientific knowledge and theoretical basis for the restoration and protection of degraded ecosystems in soil erosion-prone regions. These researches were supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Key R&D plan of Gansu Province, and the Special Project of National Basic work of Science and Technology.