Abstract: Using CiteSpace software, this paper reviewed the research process of ecological protection of national parks based on 482 literatures from CNKI from 2001 to 2020. The results showed that,during the study period, the number of papers on ecological protection of national parks was increasing continuously, and the cumulative number of papers was in line with the exponential growth, which was in the stage of great development. The cooperation between the authors was mainly academic relationship, and the external cooperation was less. Beijing Forestry University, Institute of Geographical Resources of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Department of Geographical Sciences of Beijing Normal University were the core publishing institutions. The order of the apparent hot spot clusters was：ecological space, ecological compensation, ecological civilization thought, ecological tourism, nature reserves. Giant panda National Park, coordination mechanism, functional zoning, legal system, environmental education and ecological compensation standards have become the emerging research hotspots in each cluster. The results depicted the knowledge map of national park ecological protection, and provided a reference for the study of national park ecological protection.

Key words: CiteSpace, national park, ecological protection, bibliometric analysis