As the core content of ecological civilization construction, ecosystem services have been widely concerned by scholars at home and abroad in recent years. Based on the bibliometrics method, this paper used Citespace software to visually analyze 1349 CSSCI journal papers on the topic of “ecosystem services” in CNKI. The results show that: (1) the research in the field of ecosystem services in China presents an obvious three-stage characteristic of embryonic stage-initial stage-rapid development stage in terms of time. (2) There is a relatively close cooperative relationship between researchers and research institutions in the field of ecosystem services. (3) The research on ecosystem services in China mainly focused on ecosystem service value, ecological compensation, land use, and ecological security. (4) According to the chronological order of keyword emergence, ecological research frontiers can be divided into three stages: theoretical exploration (2000—2008), preliminary practice (2009—2016), and full flowering (2017—present). Finally, the paper summarizes the achievements, challenges and future improvement in the field of ecosystem service research, and puts forward some policy recommendations such as accelerating the improvement of ecosystem service value accounting and establishing and perfecting the realizing mechanism of ecosystem service value.