Facing the state demand and the development direction of eco-hydrology, the paper puts forward the significance of conducting integrated study on ecological and hydrological processes of forest ecosystem in the inland river basin of the arid regions, Northwest China.  Major recent developments of eco-hydrological processes in forest ecosystem are reviewed. We find there still exist weaknesses in the research field. Especially, several hydrological processes such as snowmelt runoff, subsurface flow, and evapotranspiration in forest ecosystem must be paid more attention in order to understand the service function of forest water conservation. The understanding is baseline to answer many crucial scientific problems. Our objective is also to promote the course of forest eco-hydrological researches in inland river basin.