The laboratory's main goal is to study the functioning and development of arid ecosystems in various landscape-ecological regions of Eurasia, and to identify the main mechanisms and diagnostic signs of their degradation and desertification under natural and anthropogenic factors.
The landscape-ecosystem approach being developed for the processes of degradation and desertification of soil cover and plant communities is a priority research direction of the laboratory.
The laboratory's scientific work is oriented toward conducting and synthesizing interdisciplinary comprehensive research: paleogeographic, biogeographic, landscape-ecological, ecological-physiological, and other areas.
The model study subjects are dominant, functionally important ecosystems ranging from extremely arid true deserts to forest-steppes and exposure forests, located on a series of permanent field sites in Buryatia and Mongolia, along the shores of Lake Baikal.
Since 1988 to the present, the laboratory staff has carried out scientific and organizational work on expeditionary research for the Joint Russian-Mongolian Complex Biological Expedition of RAS and MAS (JRMCBE RAS and MAS).
Since 2018, the laboratory has been headed by Cand. Sci. (Biol.) Sergey Nikolayevich Bazha.
2025 will mark the 55th anniversary of the expedition's founding.