Abstract: Our understanding of resources and environmental carrying capacity is deepened with the comprehensive effects of human needs and external stress. When human survival and development mainly depend on the supply of local resources and environmental conditions, the resources and environmental carrying capacity is largely controled by the dominant limiting factors. With sustainable development and environmental protection, the resources and environmental carrying capacity has gradually changed from supply restriction to demand support. There is an expression of capacity, threshold, intensity, and ability to characterize the resources and environmental carrying capacity. The impact of climate change and human activities on the resource and environmental system is increasing, altering resources and environmental carrying capacity. At present, the interrelationship and internal mechanism among resource and environmental carrying capacity, ecosystem vulnerability, and climate change risk are still unclear, which restricts the further development of theory and method. We preliminarily summarized and discussed the basic theory and method system of the research on carrying capacity of regional resources and environment. Furthermore, we advocated to develop the cascade relations of “carrying capacity of biological population development-carrying capacity of environmental stress in ecosystems-natural resources supply carrying capacity-natural environment carrying capacity-carrying capacity of social and economic development”. Moreover, the calculation method and conceptual model of multi-dimensional resource and environmental carrying capacity were put forward under each concept framework. This study provided new ideas for the research on the method of resources and environment carrying capacity.

Key words: macroeconomic system, resources and environmental carrying capacity, ecological threshold, resilience ball