Ecosystem is an important part of the earth system science. In recent years, various countries and relevant agencies have continued to increase efforts to study the ecosystem.In this paper, combined with “pathfinder” algorithm, we use the bibliometric tools such as Thomson Data Analyzer, NetDraw and Aureka to analyze the data of ecosystem research from the SCIE and SSCI databases.  By the statistical analysis of the literature data of the main countries and institutions, we have found  that: The ecosystem research papers from  the  United States, Germany and the United Kingdom have stronger impact in this area; the United States is the centre of international cooperation of ecosystem research; The impact of the ecosystem research papers from University of California-Berkeley,National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the French National Institute for Agricultural Research is stronger; the United States Department of Agriculture,the Max Planck Institute,Washington University and the University of Lund are centers of international cooperation for ecosystem research; Chinese ecosystem research papers have obvious advantages in quantity, but the quality of papers is not high; The main research focuses of the international ecosystem research  are  concentrated  on the coral reef ecosystem research, climate change research and ecosystem management,etc.