As the idea and theory of sustainable utilization of natural resources have been prevailing during recent years, researches on the classification of ecological land and the evaluation of ecological services of ecological land have become increasingly more important. Meanwhile, ecological land conservation has become the focus of land use researches and ecological construction. Literature review of ecological land studies was carried out in this paper. The value of land ecosystem services was analyzed and assessed based on functional characteristics of land ecosystems. The definition of ecological land was also put forward. Ecological land was defined as a land use type with various ecological purposes, such as helping restore ecological functions of land ecosystems, maintaining ecological stability and improving the diversity of socio-economic-natural complex ecosystems, etc. Finally, land was classified into three categories: ecological land, industrial land and living land. In this study, the ecological land was categorized into four sub-categories (natural land, reserved land, leisure purpose land and pollutant containing land) and 20 primary categories. The classification of ecological land can be used as a reference for the establishment of reasonable land use classification and the planning of ecological land.