Abstract: With the construction of national ecological civilization, the value orientation of urban and rural planning has changed from promoting urban and rural economic development to the pursuit of harmonious development between man and nature, which makes the ecological value of the vast rural areas outside the urban built-up areas increasingly prominent. Focusing on the problems of ecological protection and rural development in Qinling Mountains, taking Shangluo City, Shaanxi Province as an example, this paper studies the distribution characteristics and optimization of rural settlements in Shangluo City by using the kernel density method, suitability evaluation and ecological sensitivity evaluation of rural settlements. In order to improve the accuracy of the suitability analysis model, four dimension parameters of cultivated land scale, school scale, medical point scale and rural residential area scale were added to the traditional construction suitability evaluation model. In the process of optimization, four factors should be considered:increasing the boundary of urban development, permanent basic protection of farmland, ecological sensitivity and construction suitability. The results show that:(1) the distribution of rural settlements in Shangluo City has the characteristics of typical mountain settlements, and the distribution trend is consistent with the change of terrain, which is obviously affected by the terrain factors. In the places with large terrain change, the distribution of rural settlements is broken, and in the places with small terrain change, the area of residential areas is large, showing flake and banded distribution. (2) The overall layout of rural settlements in Shangluo City is not conducive to the production and life of rural residents. The relationship between people and ecological environment in Shangluo City is tense and the ecological environment is under great pressure, so it is necessary to optimize the rural settlements in Shangluo City. (3) After optimization, the areas of local urbanization, key development, controlled development and consolidation rural settlements in Shangluo City are 22.66km², 162.01km², 63.29km² and 43.80km² respectively.