Abstract: The Dongting Lake area is the largest storage lake of the Yangtze River region and Asia’s largest inland wetland. It protects the ecological integrity of the Yangtze River basin region, and also influences the economic and social sustainable development of the region. It is important to assess the ecological service function in Dongting Lake Area to facilitate protection and restoration of Dongting Lake wetland ecosystems, and also to coordinate exchange of information between economic development and environmental protection agencies. In this article, the market value method, protection costs, opportunity costs, shadow engineering, consumer surplus and valuation methods were used to analyze 18 ecosystem service functions of the wetland ecosystem in Dongting Lake. The total value of wetland services was 1733634×10⁴ yuan in Dongting Lake in 2010, of which the social service value (895759×10⁴ yuan)>adjustment and support value (765662×10⁴ yuan)>supply function value (102213×10⁴ yuan). These values accounted for 51.67%,42.43% and 5.90%, respectively, of the total value of the ecosystem services. Whether these services can be captured by the market economy or not, the economic value of the direct services was assessed as 985863×10⁴ yuan, and the ecological value of indirect services was 747771×10⁴ yuan. Hence, the ratio of direct∶indirect value was 1∶0.76. The results of this study could provide data to guide the development of Dongting Lake Ecological Economic Zone.