旅游是人们应对过快生活节奏、舒缓压力、放松身心的休闲行为之一.随着旅游的发展,旅游者增多、旅游活动范围扩大,旅游对生态环境的影响逐渐显露出来.生态环境是旅游可持续发展的基础,部分旅游目的地由于缺乏对旅游资源进行系统科学的评估与规划,旅游开发模式相对单一、粗放,导致地方一时难以应对大量人口的涌入,自身内部系统受到一系列的干扰,对当地生态环境带来了恶劣的影响.在危及旅游业自身发展的同时,当地居民的生存质量也受到了威胁.旅游-环境问题成为旅游领域的研究热点.生态学理论为旅游研究提供新的理论视角,学者们开始致力于研究旅游活动对植被、动物、水、土壤等具体要素及整体环境的影响.通过收集1990–2020年国内外生态学理论相关的旅游文献,梳理生命周期、景观生态学、承载力、生物多样性、生态位、生态足迹等生态学理论在旅游领域中的应用现状.研究发现,这些理论在旅游领域的应用主要集中在实证研究上,对相关基础理论的研究较少.在实证研究方面,研究方法缺乏创新.因此,未来的研究应重视生态理论在旅游领域的理论研究,并结合现代科学技术在实际应用中加强研究方法的创新,并对生态理论在未来旅游研究中的应用前景进行了探讨.“,”With the development of tourism, the number of tourists and the scope of tourism activities are increas-ing, and the impact of tourism on the ecological environment is gradually revealed. The ecological environment is the foundation of sustainable tourism development. Some tourist destinations lack systematic and scientific evalu-ation and the proper planning of tourism resources, which makes it difficult for local areas to cope with the influx of a large number of people. In these destinations, the internal system is perturbed by a series of disturbances, which leads to bad effects on the local ecological environment. In addition to endangering the development of tourism, the quality of life of local residents is also threatened. Consequently, the issues between tourism and environment have become a hot topic in the field of tourism research. Through the collection of domestic and foreign tourism literature related to ecological theories since 1990 to 2020, the status of the application of various ecological theo-ries in the field of tourism is revealed, such as life cycle theory, landscape ecology theory, carrying capacity theo-ry, biodiversity, ecological niche theory and ecological footprint theory. This analysis found that the application of these theories to tourism mainly focuses on empirical research, and there are few studies on the basic theories related to it. In the empirical research, innovation of the research methods is basically absent. Therefore, future research should pay more attention to the theoretical research of ecological theory in the field of tourism, and combine modern science and technology in the practical application to strengthen the innovation of research methods. In addition, the prospect of applying ecological theories in future tourism research is discussed.