Ecological land is the core set of several land use types in ecological space planning and ecological protection. In this paper, the stability index was put forward as a tool to measure the spatial stability of ecological land. Based on the village-level ecological land stability index from 2000 to 2010 and from 2010 to 2020 in Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province, the quantity and pattern characteristics of the stability of ecological land use were revealed, using transition probability matrix and spatial correlation statistics method. The results showed that:(1) according to land cover in 2000, 2010 and 2020, ecological land was mainly distributed in the northern Loess Plateau Hilly and Gully Region and the northern part of the central Loess Tableland, the southern Guanzhong Plain region was the most scarce. In the past 20 years, the total area of ecological land decreased by 4509.81hm², and in the last 10 years, the area of ecological land decreased by 3058.92hm², which was 2.11 times that of the previous 10 years. (2) The spatial distribution of stable ecological land presented the same as that of ecological land, and its area increased from 266935.14hm² in 2000-2010 to 275851.17hm² in 2010-2020. (3) In 2000-2010 and 2010-2020, the ecological land stability index of the whole city maintained 26%-28%, among which the Loess Hilly and Gully Regionbasically kept 43%-45%, Loess Tableland was 14%-15%, and Guanzhong Plain area was below 0.2%. From 2000-2010 to 2010-2020, the ecological land stability index increased by 0.87% in the whole city, in which the Loess Hilly and Gully Regionincreased by 1.61%, the Guanzhong Plain Region increased by 0.02%, and the Loess Tableland Region decreased by 0.15%. The classification results of ecological land stability index indicated that the areas with low stability grade were decreasing, while the areas with medium and high stability grade were expanding. (4) From the analysis of the spatial pattern of ecological land use stability, the local spatial autocorrelation analysis of ecological land stability index showed that, the whole city was dominated by high-high agglomerations and low-low agglomerations, accounting for 48%-49% and 47%-48% of the whole city area, respectively. The high-high agglomerations were mainly distributed in the Loess Hilly and Gully Region, while the low-low agglomerations were mainly distributed in the Guanzhong Plain Region, and the Loess Tableland region. Hot spot analysis showed that, cold spots region with statistical significance (on behalf of the low stability of ecological land) was mainly concentrated in the Guanzhong Plain and the Loess Tableland Region. The hot region (on behalf of the high stability of ecological land) was mainly concentrated in the loess Hilly and Gully Region.