Abstract: Abstract：Cultivated land consolidation (CLC) is the key component of agricultural land consolidation and the potential of CLC has great significance for the planning of land consolidation and major projects. Based on the evaluation of quantitative and qualitative potential of CLC, in this study, we explored the ecological potential of CLC in China at county scale using the ecosystem services value (ESV) to characterize the ecological potential. First, the national basic average ESV of cultivated land was determined by the existing research. Then, the reference ESV of each county in China was calculated after the spatial correction and time scale correction. Combined with the original area of cultivated land, the total ESV of each county in China was calculated. Second, the qualitative potential of CLC was calculated by pre-evaluation of farmland classification, and then the ESV of cultivated land after CLC was obtained by combining the farmland classification, production capacity and ESV. The total ecological potential included the added ESV of original cultivated land after CLC and the ESV of added cultivated land. The added ESV of original cultivated land was equal to the product of the basic ESV after CLC and the area of original cultivated land. The ESV of added cultivated land was equal to the product of the basic ESV before CLC and the area of new cultivated land. Finally, the ecological potential of each county was calculated with the ESV before and after CLC. Based on the result on county-scale, we got the total ecological potential of CLC on provincial-scale and, national scale. The results proved that there were considerable and concentrated potential capacities of the CLC in China. The total ecological potential was 6.14×1011 Yuan. The counties with high ecological potential were mainly distributed in Heilongjiang and Jinlin in Northeast China, Henan, Anhui and Hubei in the east, Sichuan in the southwest, Xinjiang in the northwest; and the counties with low ecological potential were distributed in the southwest, Fujian-Canton-Hainan and Qinghai-Tibet area. The provinces with high ecological potential were mainly distributed in the middle east region, and the highest number was Sichuan province with the ecological potential of 8.02×1010 Yuan. This had a great relationship with the large area of cultivated land area and high basic average ESV of cultivated land in Sichuan province. In nine major land use areas in China, the region with highest ecological potential was the Hunan-Hubei-Anhui-Jiangxi region, reached to 1.59×1011 Yuan. The ecological potential of the Southwest region and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei-Shandong region were more than 9.00×1010 Yuan, and the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region, the Northeast region and the Shanxi-Henan region achieved to 5.00×1010 Yuan. The regions with low ecological potential were the Southwest region and the Fujian-Canton-Hainan region, especially the Qinghai-Tibet region, only 1.16×108 Yuan. In this study, we explored the new ideas and methods of ecological potential of cultivated land. The result provided guidance for the planning and ecological construction of CLC, the ecological protection in key areas. The ecological potential of CLC was represented by added characterization of ESV in this study. Owing to the limitation of data availability, the calculation of ecological potential in this study neglected the ESV reduction caused by the adjustment of other land use types. The future study should focus on the calculation of overall value of ecological potential on the CLC project regions with the consideration of ecological environment, social effect, and human development.