The aim of the present study was to examine the impact of ecological location factors on forest ecological security, establish an evaluation index system and study the internal effect mechanism of its spatial correlation to evaluate and monitor forest ecological security.Based on 80 counties in Jiangsu Province forest panel data from 2000 to 2015 were analyzed in this study using the entropy, expert, and fuzzy matter element methods to calculate the forest ecological security index, which was adjusted according to the ecological location model obtained from the meteorological and terrain indexes.Moreover, the combined use of ArcGIS software, ESDA and CSDA models in the present study revealed that (1) population density, unit area energy consumption and proportion of reforestation area are the most important measures;(2) the area with the highest ecological location coefficient was mainly distributed in southern Jiangsu Province.Further,the area with the lowest ecological location coefficient was mainly distributed in the northeast;(3) the forest ecological security status in southern Jiangsu was better than that in northern and mideastern Jiangsu;(4) regarding forest cover change from 2000 to 2015, 65% of the ESI index of all counties in Jiangsu Province showed an obvious declining trend;(5) the overall spatial correlation of the forest ESI index in counties of the Jiangsu Province was significant,but the spatial aggregation in 2000-2015 decreased and Low-Low clustering was more significant(P ≤ 0.01);and (6) the diffusion and reflux effects between the forest ESI index in the counties of Jiangsu Province were concomitant.