Classification of spatial scale and the measurement of edge effect in ecology were reviewed in this paper. The spatial scales can be classified into large-scale (biome ecotone), meso-scale (ecological ecotone) and small-scale (community ecotone) through the formation and maintenance of edge effect in ecology based on the synthetic analysis of published literatures. The biome ecotone is influenced by climate, regional dominant vegetation, and terrain environment. The ecological ecotone usually distributed in the transitional region with remarkable habitat heterogeneity, which connects adjacent ecosystems and affects the flow of the energy and nutrient. Presently, the study of edge effect in ecology mainly focus on boundaries sensitivity which associate with the urban-rural ecotone, the forest-grassland ecotone, the agro-pastoral ecotone, the forest-farmland ecotone, the water-land ecotone, and the forest-swamp ecotone. As to the community ecotone which link with different patches in the internal of community, the previous studies focused on community edge, gap edge, and treelines. The borderlines of the different biome ecotones and the gradients of species distribution in the biome ecotone have been investigated through the method of the quantitative ecology. The dynamic change, location and width of the ecological ecotone have been studied using the Geographic Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) technology and landscape ecology theory. As important indicators, the distance from edge, population, structures diversity determined for establishing models which can be applied to measure the intensity of edge effect and to decide the positive or negative impact on community. Although the study for the edge effect in ecology most reported in the meso-scale and the small-scale, however, the study on large-scale should be pay more attention as it′s potential value in ecology and global change fields.