1.College of Resources and Environment, Beijing Forestry University, 100083;2.Chinese Academy of Forestry, 100091: Beijing;3.Hebei Academy of Forestry, 050061, Shijiazhuang: China
Abstract：Agroforestry is a artificial and natural complex ecosystem, which has a very important eco-economic value for the vegetation restoration and the sustained development of land productivity. A series of questions about the ecological principles and eco-economic functions of agroforestry was discussed in this paper by summarizing former studies, and the definition of agoforestry and its basic characteristics was analysed. The ecological principles and eco-economic functions for establishing agreforestry ecosystem were summed up. And meanwhile the principles and basis of selecting biological components for establishing agroforestry ecosystem and the standard for structure optimization of agroforestry ecosystem were emphatically point out, and in the ecotone areas the agroforestry ecosystem has a bidirectional ecological buffering function. In the future, in order to explore the relationship among the components in the agroforestry ecosystem, " natural ecosystem" characterized by little disturbance from human beings or nature are suggested to be a reference model for the research of agroforestry ecosystem, and the mechanisms of ecological harmony of the biological components and ecological effects of the small scale of spatial heterogeneity to the vegetation restoration and establishment for local habitat should be studied too. The location research of the agroforestry ecosystem should be strengthened.
2003, Vol. 1 
