With the recent implementation of the "One Belt and One Road Initiative" and the implementation of ecological civilization construction, the northwestern region of China, with rich ecological types but a fragile natural environment, has attracted academic attention again. Historically, the Lop Nur area used to be an important node connecting the east-west land transportation route of the Silk Road and played a major role in Sino-foreign civilization exchanges and national integration, but now the severe deterioration of the ecological environment in Lop Nur and the Lop Nur region has prompted people to rethink the history of the region's ecological environment. In order to further the understanding of the overall situation,the prevailing topics of interest, and academic frontier trends of current ecological environment research in the Lop Nur area, this paper summarizes ecological environment research on the Lop Nur area in the past two decades from the aspects of natural environment and human environment, which will provide a reference for an in-depth discussion of regional ecological environment changes and social civilization evolution interaction.