Lin Zhang, a professor from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, was elected to the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013. He served as deputy secretary general of the Alpine Ecology Professional Committee of the Chinese Society of Ecology, and a member of the Ex situ Conservation Committee of the China Wild Plant Protection Association.

Since 2007, he has been engaged in studies on alpine treeline in southeastern Tibet. The main research direction is the ecological adaptability of alpine plants like Rhododendron, paying particular attention to the adaptation strategies of trees and shrubs in the treeline transition zone and alpine zone and their response to climate change. In the early stage, a survey was conducted on the leaf functional traits of constructive species in zonal forest from tropical to cold temperate zone in eastern China, and the forest vegetation zonation in China was simulated based on plant leaf lifespan.

In the past 5 years, he has hosted research projects related to alpine vegetation including: the National Natural Science Foundation project "Ring widths as indicators of long-term variation of productivity for Caragana versicolor shrubs in arid and semi-arid regions of Tibet ", the Special Project of Basic Scientific and Technological Work "Investigation of Main Shrub Communities in China", Sub-project "Investigation of Shrub Communities in Tibet Autonomous Region", the Special Yopic of Strategic Leading Science and Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences "Research on Shrub Carbon Sequestration in Tibet Autonomous Region", etc. In 2017 and 2018, as the executive team leader of the Second Comprehensive Scientific Investigation and Research on the Tibetan Plateau-the Southeast Tibetan Forest Ecosystem Investigation Team and the Sino-Nigeria Cross-Border Biological Investigation Team, he led two teams to conduct comprehensive investigations of subalpine forest vegetation.

He has published more than 40 papers, over 30 of which are related to treeline and alpine vegetation. Representative papers have been published in J Biogeogr, Ecography, Agric For Meteorol, For Ecol Manage, J Geophys Res Biogeosci and Ecol Indic, etc.