Since the 1950s, driven by large-scale, long-term and continuous comprehensive investigations of natural resources oriented to serve national strategic needs, China's natural resources research has formed a comprehensive and integrated development characteristics, and the development process of "task with discipline" has also gradually created a more systematic resources science theoretical basis and empirical methodology system. Faced with the country's major demand for deepening the reform of the comprehensive management system of natural resources since the establishment of the Ministry of Natural Resources, promoting the establishment and improvement of an independent resources science discipline system has become an important task in the field of natural resources research in China. This article systematically sorts out the development process of comprehensive investigation and research on China's natural resources from the 1950s to the early 2000s, focusing on the key development directions and characteristics of different periods. Combining the summary and prospects of historical opportunities in different periods, we believe that China's natural resources research has formed a national demand-oriented and leading discipline development trend. In the future, we should continue to adhere to the comprehensive research paradigm featured by multi-disciplinary integration; open up new perspectives on resources science system research with Chinese characteristics; accelerate the formation of a complete discipline system; improve the talent training system of resources science; strengthen the study of the discipline history of resources science; determine the relationship between resources science and geography, geology, ecology, environmental science and other related disciplines; actively introduce the big data theoretical framework and technical advantages to innovate "Natural Resources Big Data" or "Resource Utilization Big Data" and other related theories and technologies and to establish a dynamic evaluation method for the process of natural resources development and utilization; provide the background of natural resources and its comprehensive impact assessment with the ecology and environment for ecological civilization construction and sustainable development strategies support for decision-making; explore and analyze natural laws, socio-economic laws and the systematic association between the two in the process of natural resources utilization.