Abstract: The forest transition refers to the changing process of forest area during the gradual reduction turned to a rising trend in a country or area. Since 1990s, the ecological and environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss draw attentions continuously, thus the research theories and methods for forest transition has gradually become a front and hot chase in the international academic circles. Having forest transition as the theme of this article, and based on the introduction of origin of studying forest transition, as well as following the development context and internal logic of studying forest transition, the research progress on forest transition theories is sorted systematically from the aspects of deforestation environmental Kuznets curve and forest transition pathways. The major issues in the researches of forest transition are summarized, and the future directions of studying it are proposed, including studying the impact of economic globalization on forest transition, refining the research scope, and analyzing the transition of forest quality.