At the invitation of the Soil Institute, Institute National de la Recherche AgronomiqueInstitut National de la Recherche Agronomique(IARA), associate researcher of ISWC Dr. AN Shaoahan paid a visit to the institute from April 5th to May 28th , and conducted academic exchange. This academic exchange is one of contents of the Sino-France cooperation project “ Evaluation of Soil Erodibility”.

During his visit, Dr Shao conducted an in-depth study about their experience, methods and achievements in soil erosion research, and got to know the Le-Bissonnais method, approach to test the stability of soil aggregates. He used the Le-Bissonnais to test 60 soil samples of Loess Plateau with diiferent vegetation communities and got terrific experiment data. Both sides exchanged views on the test of soil stability, rainfall artificial simulation and soil crust measurement. During his visit , Dr. Shao made a report on “ Correlation between vegetation restoration and soil structure stability on Loess Plateau”. This aroused the interest of French researchers, and they showed strong interest to cooperate with ISWC to develop practical methods and techniques for the measurement of soil erodibility.