Abstract: As the linkage of human well-being and ecosystem, ecosystem services have become an important content of researches in geography, ecology and other related disciplines. It is essential to understand the tradeoffs and synergies among ecosystem services for the promotion of overall benefit and human wellbeing and for natural resources management and ecological planning. It has become a hotspot in the ecosystem services research. Firstly, this paper summarizes the connotation, classification and assessment methods of ecosystem services. Secondly, the progress of research on synergies and tradeoffs among ecosystem services is reviewed from the perspectives of theoretical basis, classification and methodologies. Lastly, the possible research trends in future are put forward from four perspectives, including the adoption of other disciplines’ theories and the construction of an integrated multidisciplinary research framework; the perfection of ecosystem services classification and the quantification of non-linear feature of synergies and tradeoffs; the depiction of spatial flow of ecosystem services and the strengthening of spatial and temporal integration of synergies and tradeoffs; and the systematic discovery of mechanism of synergies and tradeoffs and the application of the research findings in the field of land use planning and management.

Key words: emergy-ecological footprint approach, sustainability, northeast old industrial area., ecological coordination coefficient, ecological security