Major resource,environmental and ecological issues faced in the current economic society form a web of linked dependencies among environments, societies and economies. A new approach is needed to erase boundaries of traditional disciplines and facilitate the integration of more academic disciplines. The earth s critical zone near the surface environment that supports almost all human activity, provides a holistic framework for this kind of approaches. This paper introduces the definitions and characteristics of the earth' s critical zone, analyzes two research lines of Driver-Pressure-Status-Influence-Response framework and Mapping-Monitoring-Modeling framework, and reviews the progress in the critical zone science of recent years. Critical zone science in the crossing disciplines such as geology, hydrology, pedology, ecology, etc.,will advance our ability to address critical societal issues such as global changes,ecological management,water security, and natural hazard prevention. This paper put forward several suggestions for geological survey in China, to enhance basic geological survey and hydrogeological, engineering geological and environmental geological survey of the critical zone to develop 3-D geological framework models, to build critical zone observatories at typical small catchments to provide a platform for coupling of geology and other disciplines.