Abstract:Great attentions have been paid on ecological water use in recent years,but a lots of questions are still unsolved, such as confusion in definition of ecological water use. At first we redefined ecological water use as water resources demand for maintaining the special structure, process and services of ecosystems. Estimating methods of ecological water use were reviewed for four ecosystems whose ecosystem functions are closely pertain to water available: such as river, vegetation, wetland and urban etc. ...