The Loess Plateau plays an important role in the regional economic development in China; however, the serious issues of soil erosion, fragile ecosystem, and unreasonable land use exacerbate the degradation of land resources and decline of ecosystem services. To restore the damaged ecosystem in the Loess Plateau is of high significance in realizing the regional sustainable socio-economic development for improving the human living environment and ensuring national ecological security. In the last decade, Chinese scholars have conducted numerous studies directed towards solving the issues faced by the Loess Plateau using the landscape ecology principles including landscape pattern evolution, driving mechanism, soil erosion process, and ecosystem services. Main achievements were focused on the landscape pattern evolution and ecological environmental effects, coupling of landscape patterns and ecological processes, and tradeoff between vegetation restoration and ecosystem services. In this paper, the characteristics of landscape ecological studies in the Loess Plateau in the recent five years were reviewed, and the associated problems were analyzed. For example, the comparative study from large-scale, integrating landscape patterns and ecological processes, as well as ecosystem service tradeoff methodology are essentially required. The Chinese landscape ecologists would face the following challenges in future. First, the comprehensive studies should be strengthened on the regional-scale and among different regions, and more attention should be paid to deepen the understanding of the mechanisms of formation and evolution of landscape patterns. Second, the methods for the quantitative identification of patterns and processes should be explored. Third, it is necessary to strengthen the coupling models of patterns and processes. Last, it is necessary to carry out the studies on ecosystem service and advance the corresponding empirical studies, and to develop the ecosystem service tradeoff model for exploring the tradeoff mechanisms in the regional ecosystem services.