The evaluation of ecological protection importance is an important component of the"dual evaluation"work in the national spatial planning system,and is the basic guarantee for the coordinated development of regional agricultural production and urban construction.Taking the Wuhan metropolitan area as an example,remote sensing data is used as the main source of data.Based on the importance of ecosystem service functions and ecological sensitivity evaluation models,and combined with the concentration of ecological patches,an ecological protection importance evaluation system is con-structed to classify the importance levels of ecological protection.The results show that the area of the extremely important ecological protection zone in the Wuhan metropolitan area is 18 600 km2,accounting for 32.02%of the total area,and the area of the highly important ecological protection zone is 19 400 km2,accounting for 33.46%of the total area.The extremely important and highly important ecological protection zones are mainly distributed in areas with extremely impor-tant ecosystem service functions and ecological sensitivity,such as the Dabie Mountains in the east and the Mufu Mountains in the south.This study can provide data support for the optimization of regional ecological space and ecologi-cal protection red lines,and has important reference value for the green development and ecological protection of the Wuhan metropolitan area.