On November 3-9, the 9^th International Symposium on Gully Erosion, sponsored by the Bureau of International Cooperation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and hosted by the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, CAS, was held in Chengdu on the theme of “Towards deepening and integration: Research on gully erosion under global environmental change”. More than 220 experts and scholars from China, Australia, Spain, Belgium, the United States, Germany, Japan and other countries and regions attended this conference. Prof. Duihu Ning, the president of WASWAC attended this conference and presented a speech.

The conference specially invited Prof. Scott Wilkinson from Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Prof. Zheng Fenli from Northwest A&F University, Prof. Javier Casalí from Public University of Navarra, Spain, Prof. Zhang Xingyi from Northeast Institute of Geography, CAS, Prof. Michael Maerker from Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research, Germany, Prof. Matthias Vanmaercke from University of Leuven, Belgium, Prof. Cai Chongfa from Huazhong Agricultural University, and Prof. Robert Wells from the United States Department of Agriculture to give keynote reports and share the international frontier and latest progress of gully erosion research around the world.

The conference set up five sessions, including "New technologies and new methods for gully erosion research", "Development characteristics, influencing factors and environmental effects of gully erosion", "Dynamic process and mechanism of gully erosion", "Model simulation and prediction of gully erosion", "Prevention and control of gully erosion, land management and its social and economic effects", two special reports for graduate students and one special exhibition for wall posters, with a total of more than 100 academic reports. The research progress, development trend and future direction of global gully erosion process mechanism, simulation and prediction, prevention and control technology were deeply discussed.

The International Symposium on Gully Erosion is an international conference initiated by renowned soil erosion and geomorphology scientists of the International Association of Geomorphologists and has received positive responses from scholars around the world. Since the first conference was held in University of Leuven, Belgium in 2000, a total of eight sessions were held respectively in the United States (2000), China (2002), Spain (2004), Poland (2007), Romania (2010), the United States (2016) and Australia (2019). This conference is hosted by the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, CAS again after 21 years, which highlights the international status and influence of the institute in this field.