The State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change (LVEC) was officially  approved for construction by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) in October 2007. It was developed from the Open Laboratory for Vegetation Numerical Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), which was founded in November 1989. The main research themes of the laboratory cover vegetation pattern and evolvement, biodiversity and ecological conservation, response and adaptation to global change, biogeochemical cycle, and prataculture ecology and sustainability. The director of the Academic Committee is Academician Fang Jingyun and the director of the laboratory is Prof. Zhang Wenhao.

The LVEC is composed of 19 research groups, a CERN sub-center for biology, 10 field ecological stations, and analytical and testing center. Among the field ecological stations, 3 stations are funded by MoST, 4 stations belong to Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN, CAS). There are 40 instruments worth more than 100 thousand yuan, and the total value of the instruments is more than 20 million yuan.

There are 90 academic staff in LVEC, including two CAS Members, three scientists entitled as  the Distinguished Young Scientists supported by National Science Foundation of China (NSFC), four scientists honored by Thousand Talent Program for Young Outstanding Scientists, and four scientists are CAS-supported Hundred Talent Program. Currently, there are about 160 graduate students in the LVEC.

Several competitive projects funded by MoST and NSF and CAS are undertaken by staff at LVEC, including National Key Research and Development Projects, National Basic Research Program of China, NSFC key projects and NSFC Outstanding Young Scientists Projects. Staff at LVEC have published more than 140 research papers in international journals including Nature Communications, Global Change Biology, Global Ecology and Biogeography, New Phytologist, Remote Sensing of Environment, Journal of Ecology, Journal of Experimental Botany, Ecology and Functional Ecology, Global Biogeochemical Cycles.