Abstract：Stable surfaces, as the two-dimensional analogue of stable curves, were introduced by Kollár and Shepherd-Barron in 1988 to compactify the moduli spaces of surfaces of general type in a geometrically meaningful way. Nowadays the theory of stable surfaces, including the existence of various bounds as an important aspect, has been well established. In this talk I will give an introduction to the notion of stable surfaces and present some effective bounds concerning their geography and pluricanonical maps, based partly on joint works with S?nke Rollenske and with Valery Alexeev.