Introduction

In July 2000, four institutes, including the former Department of Resources and Environmental Science of Northwest Agricultural University, the Department of Soil and Water Conservation and Desertification Control of Northwest Forestry College, the Institute of Soil and Fertilizer of Shaanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and the Institute of Loess Plateau Governance, merged into the College of Natural Resources and Environment. The history of the college can be traced back to 1930s. As early as 1936, when the predecessor of Northwest A&F University- National Northwest Junior College of Agriculture and Forestry was founded, the Department of Agricultural Chemistry began to recruit undergraduates. In 1959, the Department of Soil Agricultural Chemistry of Northwest Agricultural University began to recruit graduate students in soil science.

The college has a complete talent training system covering undergraduate, master, and doctoral degree education and postdoctoral mobile stations. It has five undergraduate majors, namely, Resources and Environmental Science, Environmental Science, Environmental Engineering, Geographic Information Science, Soil and Water Conservation and Desertification Control, and one Sino-foreign cooperative undergraduate major in Environmental Science. Two majors, including Resources and Environmental Science, and Soil and Water Conservation and Desertification Control, are approved as national first-class undergraduate major construction sites. It enjoys two first-class discipline doctoral degree authorization centers in Agricultural Resources and Environment, Environmental Science and Engineering, and six doctoral degree authorization centers in two disciplines, such as Soil Science, Plant Nutrition, Land Resources and Spatial Information Technology, Resource and Environmental Biology, Environmental Science, and Environmental Engineering. Soil Science is a national key discipline, and Plant Nutrition is a key discipline in Shaanxi Province. There are two postdoctoral mobile stations in Agricultural Resources and Environment, Environmental Science and Engineering; There are also two authorization centers for master's degree in agriculture (Resources Utilization and Plant Protection) and engineering (Resources and Environment). At present, there are 1,236 undergraduates, 757 postgraduates, 218 doctoral students, and 26 foreign students.

The college has the Northwest Key Laboratory of Plant Nutrition and Agricultural Environment of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Heyang Agricultural Environment and Cultivated Land Conservation Scientific Observation Experimental Station of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Yangling Observation Experimental Station of National Agricultural Science Soil Quality (National Loess Fertility and Fertilizer Benefit Positioning Monitoring Base), Shaanxi Agricultural Waste Resource Utilization Engineering Technology Research Center, university-level "Environmental Pollution Process and Control Research Center" and Fuping Modern Agriculture Comprehensive Experiment and Demonstration Station. Besides, it has Agricultural Resources and Environmental Science Experimental Teaching Center, Resources and Environmental Science Research Experimental Center and a large number of off-campus teaching. Shaanxi Plant Nutrition and Fertilizer Society,and Forest and Grass Professional Committee of Shaanxi Soil and Water Conservation Society are affiliated to the college.

There are 171 faculty members in this college, including 40 Prof.s, 66 associate Prof.s, and 3 senior experimenters, and there are more than 70 faculty returned overseas. There are 108 graduate supervisors (doctoral supervisors and masters supervisors), including 5 candidates from the national talent program and 67 doctoral supervisors. There are 6 experts who enjoy special government subsidies from the State Council, 1 with outstanding contributions at the provincial and ministerial levels, 1 as the member of the State Council's "Agricultural Resources and Environment" discipline evaluation group, 3 candidates of the Ministry of Education's "New Century Excellent Talents Support Program", 2 post scientists in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, 1 outstanding agricultural research talent, 1 famous teacher in Shaanxi Province, 1 winner of Shaanxi Outstanding Youth Science Fund, 2 "Three-to-Five Talents", 1 "Young Science and Technology Rising Star", and 1 double-hired academician.

The college enjoys distinct characteristics and advantages in the research fields of soil moisture process and global change, soil carbon and nitrogen process and nutrient management, plant nutrition regulation and dryland water and fertilizer management, soil process and degradation control, land resource evaluation and information technology, geosphere environmental process and organic pollution control, waste recycling and soil remediation. In the past five years, 585 national and provincial-level scientific research projects have been undertaken by the college faculty, including 61 National Natural Science Foundation of China, with accumulated funds of 211 million yuan for various scientific research projects, and more than 10 provincial-level scientific and technological achievement awards were awarded. 2 international patents, 20 invention patents, and 24 utility model patents.were authorized. 830 SCI papers and 10 academic monographs were published. In addition, 1 special prize of Shaanxi Higher Education Teaching Achievement Award was awarded, and 10 textbooks were published, including 2 textbooks of the 12th Five-Year Plan for general higher education.

The college has established communication and cooperation relations with many well-known universities and research institutions at home and abroad, and a workstation for overseas academicians of resources and environmental biology. It has cooperated with the University of Arizona to carry out undergraduate education in Environmental Science. Over the past five years, more than 200 experts and scholars from the United States, Britain, Germany, Australia and other countries have been invited here to exchange ideas, and more than 100 teachers and students have gone abroad for academic exchanges. It held more than 30 international and domestic academic conferences and participated in more than 10 international cooperative research projects.

Adhering to the motto of "Dedication-Enjoyment-Truth Seeking-Innovation", the college insists on building first-class disciplines as the key point of college development, strives to build a first-class faculty team, vigorously improving the teaching and research conditions, and comprehensively facilitating the quality of personnel training. Focusing on national food security, cultivated land protection and utilization, agricultural green transformation and development, agricultural environment response to global changes and the frontier issues of discipline development, it promotes the close integration of Industry-University-Research, and strives to become a first-class research-oriented college in China and internationally.