Title of the speech："Forest hydrological research in China：Past, Present, and Future".

Professor Shirong Liu is an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a distinguished researcher from the Chinese Academy of Forestry. His illustrious career includes leadership roles in prominent national and international scientific organizations, notably as President of the Chinese Ecological Society, Executive Member of the International Society for Ecology, and Vice President of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations. Currently, he holds multiple pivotal positions, including the head of the Key Laboratory of Forest Ecosystem, a flagship research unit under the National Forestry and Grassland Administration and Vice President of the Chinese Society of Forestry.

Professor Shirong Liu has pioneered groundbreaking research in forest structure and function, ecological restoration of degraded natural forests and plantation, multifunctional forest management, forest hydrology, and climate change adaptation strategies. His exceptional scholarly output has earned him four Second-Class National Science and Technology Progress Awards(serving as leading recipient for two), three First-Class Provincial/Ministerial Science and Technology Awards, and recognition as a Highly Cited Chinese Researcher (Elsevier) in forestry. His intellectual leadership is further evidenced by over 200 peer-reviewed publications in top-tier journals such as 《Nature Communications》, 《Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences》and《Global Change Biology》.

Title of the speech："Tropical forest restoration for water conservation: insights from Brazil".

Professor Silvio Ferraz is a Forest Engineer and received his PhD on Forest Ecosystem Conservation from the University of São Paulo. He currently is Full Professor at "Luiz de Queiroz" College of Agriculture (ESALQ), University of São Paulo (USP). His research is related to forest management and conservation in order to conserve water and ecosystem services. He is the coordinator of Forest Hydrology Laboratory at ESALQ and scientific coordinator of Forested catchment environmental monitoring program (PROMAB) at Forest Science and Research Institute (IPEF) about 40 catchments in Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay. Professor Ferraz has published more than 130 scientific papers and his publications reflect his interest on watershed management, forest plantation hydrology, ecohydrology of forest restoration, landscape ecology, ecosystem services, conservation planning and stream ecology.

Title of the speech:"Ecohydrology and Green Development in Yangtze River: Opportunities & Challenges"

Prof. Jun Xia is an Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and Chair Professor & Director, The Research Institute for Water Security (RIWS), Wuhan University. He is a foreign member of The Norwegian Academy of Science & Letters since 2023. He has ample experiences on hydrology, water resources management in China and international since 1987, severed as the President of International Water Resources Association (IWRA, 2009-2012), Board Governor of World Water Council (WWC,2009-2015), Co-Chair, Inter Academy Council for Water Programme (2004-2010),Bureau Member of International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG, 2019-2023),and Board member of SAC for UNESCO-IHP, Ecohydrology Programme etc. He was awarded “International Hydrological Prize -Volker Medal”, given jointly by IAHS,UNESCO and WMO in 2014, the 2017’s State Natural Science Award in China, IWRA’s Ven Te Chow Memorial Award and Lecture 2023. He is 2019’s IUGG Fellow, and 2023’s the International Science Council (ISC) Fellow. His expertise is hydrology, nonlinear system approach coupled with environment changing and human activity and water resources management & policy.

Title of the Speech: "Managing Forests for Water--Related Ecosystem Services".

Kevin Bishop, a professor of Environmental Assessment at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). From 2016-2020 he served as SLU’s ProVice-Chancellor with responsibility for both research infrastructure and SLU’s environmental monitoring and assessment that provides timely decision supportfor public policy. He also served the as Director of the Sweden’s National Research Infrastructure for Ecosystem Science (SITES).

Professor Kevin Bishop’s research interests focus on defining and managing human impact on aquatic ecosystems. He brings a hydrologist’s perspective to issues surrounding carbon cycles and mercury pollution in forest landscapes, with a particular focus on the transport and transformation of both natural and anthropogenic constituents as they move through catchments. He has published over 300 refereed articles in international journals. His Web of Science H-index is 70, with over 15,000 citations noted by the same source.

His scientific achievements were recognized with the Ross by Prize in Nordic Geophysics (2017) administered by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for “significant contributions in environmental research and for his commitment to the sustainable use of natural resources.” In 2019 he was elected as a Fellow of Sweden’s Royal Academy of Forestry and Agriculture. Bishop has been the principal supervisor for 20 PhD thesis.

Title of the Speech: "Quantifying Natural Capital: Lessons Learned from the U.S. and Australia"

Dr. Ning Liu is a Research Scientist at CSIRO in Canberra, Australia. He earned his PhD from Murdoch University in 2018 and an MSc from the Chinese Academy of Forestry,followed by postdoctoral research at the USDA Forest Service before joining CSIRO. His research focuses on ecohydrological modeling, ecosystem service assessment, and natural capital accounting, with an emphasis on quantifying ecosystem services and their implications for environmental sustainability. Since his master's studies, he has published 35 peer-reviewed articles—15 as first author—in leading journal such as 《Water Resources Research》《Journal of Hydrology》and《Remote Sensing of Environment》.

At the USDA Forest Service, his work contributed to advancing knowledge on the critical role of forests in drinking water supply. This research, along with the team's previous efforts, played a key role in the Forest Water Supply Modeling Team at the Southern Research Station receiving the 2023 National Rise to the Future Award's Jim Sedell Research Achievement Award. This award recognized the team's decade-long efforts in demonstrating the importance of forests in drinking water supplies and developing practical tools to assist watershed management and conservation.

Title of speech:"Visions of Carbon-Water-&-Energy Cycle Interactions in a Nature-Based Solutions Paradigm"

Professor David Ellison works as an interdisciplinary scientist. His work broadly spans the science, politics and policy of forests, carbon, water and energy cycles and their relevance for climate, sustainable development goals and human wellbeing. The two research areas in which Professor David Ellison is most thoroughly engaged concern the interaction of carbon, water, and energy cycles in promoting sustainable and resilient ecosystems, and the role of forests and forestry in climate policy frameworks.

His work has been adopted and integrated into many relevant and high-level research and scientific frameworks, influencing work on the FAO’s Forest & Water Program, the IUFRO's GFEP report on Forest and Water, and EU forest and climate policy. Recent IPCC reports have likewise cited his work, in particular on the topic of precipitation recycling. Professor David Ellison works as a Senior Researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU, Umeå). He previously worked as a Guest/Senior Researcher in the Land Systems and Sustainable Land Management group, Institute of Geography, University of Bern, and in the Natural Resource Policy group (NARP), Earth Systems Science, ETH Zürich.