Professor Zhou is an ecologist with a particular focus on ecosystem ecology and ecohydrology. He has published more than 150 SCI papers and more than 200 Chinese papers in top journals such as Sciences, Nature Communications, National Science Review, PNAS, Global Change Biology and Water Resource Research as the first or corresponding author. His papers have been cited more than 18,000 times, with more than 5000 times by other SCI papers. The main innovative academic achievements are as follows:

(1) He developed a new method for evaluate soil carbon, and elucidated the mechanism of carbon sequestration in mature forest soils, which overturned the old doctrine in ecosystem ecology regarding carbon balance in mature forests. It opened a brand new strategy in estimating global carbon sinks. He also evaluated the current status and potential baseline values of carbon sequestration of terrestrial ecosystems in China, which provided support for China’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. The result had been highly praised by Science and Nature that it promoted the establishment a new non-equilibrium theory to quantify global carbon sequestration capacity and provided scientific support for natural forests protection. It was rated as one of the most prominent studies for IPCC. The result was cited in the scientific basis on a project managed by USFS. He was invited to give a keynote presentation at the International Conference on the Carbon Cycle. The method was used as the standard method to monitor carbon stock changes by the European commission. His speech at the Climate Conference in Paris was cited by the former President of Costa Rica to support China's Intended Nationally Determined Contributions.

(2) He developed the impacts and mechanism of climate and land cover on water yield, which promoted the development of ecohydrology and provided basis for the strategy of vegetation restoration regarding water resources. The relationship between vegetation growth and runoff had been debated for a long time, which caused the concern of vegetation restoration on water consumption. He proved that vegetation increase had three effects on runoff: reduction, non-impact and increase, and presented precisely the parameters of climate and land cover in the three ways. His representative paper was exhibited as a keynote presentation in the International Union of Forest Research Organizations World Congress and was selected as the representative achievement of China in 2015. His main papers were selected as highly cited papers in the respective journals.

(3) He found the succession direction of evergreen broad-leaved forests to shrubs, based on more than 10 long-term experiments, 30 years’ Monitoring of 38 permanent plot and 4,000 sites’ data. He also clarified the mechanism of the effects of the environment, lighting the direction for the construction of ecological public forest. The paper was cited by IPCC leading scientist Betts and the US National Outstanding Achievement Award winner Professor Allen in the IPCC report and the Ecological Society of America centennial papers respectively. It was commented by well-known journals and cited by many academicians from home and abroad, and provided suggestions for the construction of ecological public forests.