This paper summarizes 8 key presentations invited by the congress, and most of the presentations from 29 sessions of congress and the forum of “National Forum on Ecology for Postgraduates” in the 15th Annual Congress of Ecological Society of China held at the Lanzhou University from 25 to 27 August, 2016. This review comprises 6 sub-fields of ecology including global change ecology, landscape ecology, conservation and restoration ecology, ecosystem management, animal and plant behavior and ecology function, humanities and agricultural ecology. The scope of this review covers from microorganisms to plants and animals, from microscopic to macroscopic scale, and from natural ecology to humanity ecology. In general, all the presentations shows that the proportion of pure fundamental researches tended to decrease, the proportion of applied fundamental researches and applied researches had a pronounced increase in this congress in comparison with that of previous ones. Particularly, the number of interdisciplinary researches has been significantly increased, implying that the future development of ecology will be getting close to productive practice, and striving for the direction of interdisciplinary applied researches. There exists a pronounced trend towards a sustainable and green development. Besides, we attempt exploring and summarizing the progresses achieved on the basis of “100 key critical issues” in modern ecology. With the aims to explore the new approaches of ecological civilization construction and the new road of green development focusing on the theme of “Innovating ecological sciences to build a beautiful China”, this congress help build a platform for sufficiently displaying all kinds of fruits in the ecology fields in China, and provide an approach for enhancing exchange and cooperation in ecology and its related fields. Among these presentations, the proportion of the participants from east China and north China (including Beijing) still remained at a relatively high level. In summary, this congress not only promotes the exchanges and cooperation among the colleagues in the field of ecology in China, but also fully demonstrates the current progresses in ecology of China. It undoubtedly expands the influence of China’s ecology and plays an active role in promoting the development of ecology in China.