Objective  The ecological wisdom contained in the traditional farming civilization with thousands of years in China reflects the concept of harmonious co-existence between man and nature. Through excavating the characteristics of ancient cultivated land reflected in ancient pastoral poetry and identifying the ancient cultivated land ecosystem, it can provide Chinese thinking for the cultivated land ecological management and protection.

  Method  The original ancient poetry data were obtained by web crawler technology, and the pre-processing and screening were carried out to extract the cultivated land information implied in the ancient poetry, and the spatial distribution pattern, cultivated land elements and farming behavior of ancient cultivated land were analyzed in combination with GIS spatial analysis and SketchUp model, and the characteristics of ancient cultivated land ecosystem were analyzed.

  Result  ① Cultivated land in ancient China was mainly distributed in the Yangtze River Basin and Yellow River Basin and the surrounding areas, it mainly included five provincial administrative regions of Jiangxi, Shanxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Henan, with superior natural, cultural and economic conditions. They were not only the concentrated area of cultivated land distribution, but also the main overlapping area of the territories ruled by various dynasties in China, and the characteristics of cultivated land were representative. ② Ancient poetry described 93 cultivated land elements, which could be divided into space and biology. Among them, the occurrence frequency of mulberry is the highest in the ancient poetry samples, followed by cattle, most of which are distributed throughout the country, followed by rice and wheat. The occurrence frequency of cultivated land elements is closely related to the social and economic production in ancient times. ③ The ancient poetry reflects the ancients adhering to the ideas of “man-nature harmony” and “Tao follows nature” to carry out agricultural production activities and promote ecological circular agriculture mode of production. For example, fertilization with straw ash increases soil nutrients while sterilizing and killing insects. ④ In the ancient cultivated land ecosystem, space is the carrier of organisms, providing living space, nutrition and food for animals and plants, animals and plants provide media for the exchange of material energy in space, and various spatial elements and biological elements play important ecological functions to form interdependent and harmonious symbiosis.

  Conclusion  The cultivated land in ancient poetry does not appear in isolation, while spatially presents the ecosystem with mountains as the carrier and basement, fields as the center, surrounding streams, forests, ponds, grasses and villages in the space.