The policy'The development campaign of the western regions'has great significance for balancing the developing disparities between different regions and improving the economic strength of China.The fragile ecological environment of the western regions determines that ecological protection should be set as the basic point, and that economic development should be combined with sustainable development in those regions.This paper systematically formulates major problems and control measures of aquatic ecosystems in Inner Mongolia-Xinjiang Plateau, where is under the influence of climate change and human activities.We choose Lake Wuliangsuhai, Lake Hulun, Lake Bosten, Lake Chaiwopu and Lake Ebinur as typical examples and analyze the changes in water ecological status in the recent decades.It is confirmed that the degradation of water ecological environment occurs.This paper aims at understanding the current characteristics of lakes in Inner Mongolia-Xinjiang Plateau and providing theoretical support for reasonable development of lake resources and protection of water ecological environment.At present, lakes in Inner Mongolia-Xinjiang Plateau is arid and semi-arid and there exists many problems, such as lake size shrinking, salinization, sediment, deterioration of water quality and structural changes of aquatic ecosystem.Compared with lakes in east China, the research on the Inner Mongolia-Xinjiang Plateau in our country lacks of systematic knowledge and lagging relatively, although some basic research and information have been developed.In the future, the following fields will be focused on:(1) the evolution and trend of water environ-mental quality in the Inner Mongolia-Xinjiang Plateau under the influence of climate change;(2) the effect of water allocation on regional hydrodynamic conditions, pollutant transport process and the influence of water scheduling to important environmental factors;(3) selecting characteristic physical and chemical factors of water environmental in the Plateau, such as mineralization degree, to examine their influence on the aquatic biological communities;(4) exploring aquatic ecological restoration technology which is suitable for arid and semi-arid regions.