The Institute is now strengthening its research activities in the major fields, such as glaciology, geocryology, desert research, plateau atmospheric science, hydrology and water resource as well as restoration ecology and ecological agriculture. With these scientific concentrations, the Institute can respond adequately to the requirements of national objectives in the development in the west China and can be a producer of fundamental theory and key technology for the rational development and utilization of land and natural resources, environmental protection and ecological construction.

The Institute can see the prospect to be an internationally predominant research center by the integrated studies on the interaction mechanism among cryosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and lithosphere within the disciplinary studies of Cryosphere and Global change, especially, when such an integrated multidisciplinary fusion is characterized by the studies of extreme environments of cold and wet, warm and arid, and by the research on the chemical and physical processes on ice and snow surface in the polar ice sheets.
characteristics and by the exertion of discipline advantages) Aiming at important scientific issues within the sustainable development in the west China, the Institute will be in full-scale involvement in the theoretical studies about optimization model for the resource utilization, ecological construction and social-economic sustainable development.