Professor Songqiao Zhao had been working almost 60 years in the broad field of Geography. He is recognized as an important founder and pioneer of integrated physical geography in China. He is a famous expert of arid area research and known as 'the king of the desert'. He is also a famous agricultural geographer with outstanding achievements on the ecotone between agriculture and animal husbandry zones. He advocated and practiced the study on integrated geographic system through land system and spatial distribution combined with temporal evolution as the main pathways. He had made outstanding contributions in foreign geography research and academic exchanges at home and abroad. His academic achievement in these areas, as well as the scholarliness styles of hardworking and enterprising, statecraft and practice, indifferent to fame and wealth, and generous and peaceful, have become valuable academic heritages of Chinese geography, and inherited and developed.