It is emphasized that the interaction between forest and environment is the fundamental subject in forest ecology. Based on the achievements at home and abroad, advances in the relationship between forest and environment are reviewed including the relations between forest and hydrological, atmospheric, soil, biological, human and other environmental factors. Meanwhile the deficiencies in the studies of the relationship between forest and environment such as lack of interdisciplinary comprehensive research, demand for in-depth research under the background of climate change, and insufficient fundamental data originated from a large temporal-spatial scale are put forward. Accordingly it is proposed to strengthen the interdisciplinary comprehensive projects, to deeply reveal the forest ecological process and its mechanism of response to climate change, to perfect a monitoring network system and basic database construction, and to give full play to the role of academic periodicals, so as to accelerate the advancement in the relationship between forest and environment.