Alpine ecology is a core issue and key topic of ecology. The study on alpine ecology has intensified. In this paper, all literatures related to alpine ecology were searched in the Science Citation Expanded database,China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database. The information collected were analyzed using bibliometric methods to systematically study the related research situation on alpine ecology about international and domestic developments in the field, and the research hot-spots of the famous institutions. The key topics and research frontiers of the alpine ecology research were discussed detailedly. The scientific outcomes of alpine ecology were increasing with a good development trend from 2001 to 2015. Developed countries proved to be main research strength in the field of the alpine ecology research,with USA and Switzerland being the leading countries in this field. China's international status has improved significantly in the field of alpine ecology, ranking 5 th in the world in terms of the number of published scientific papers, and Chinese Academy of Sciences ranking 1 st as the dominant institution. According to the situation analysis of literature development, the construction of global monitoring system of mountain environment change, alpine ecosystem response and adaptation to global change,mountain biodiversity changes, and mountain ecosystem function maintaining and ecological barrier construction, etc are the focus directions. Endowed with the largest area of mountains in the world,China should attach more importance to the further study of alpine ecology, so as to maintain the security of ecology and environment.