Abstract: How a socio-ecological system (SES) responds to changes in global environment has been deemed as a priority concern in the modern natural resources management. The resilience theory provides an important theoretic basis to scientific analysis of interactions between disturbance and adaptivity in a SES. With the contradiction between human and land resources getting increasingly prominent,, it is of great significance to analyze the connotation of resilience as a valuable feature of the nature-human system and to sum up progresses in the research of its evaluation. Based on the introduction to genesis of the resilience theory, definition of resilience was dissected and explanations of engineering resilience, ecosystem resilience and socio-ecological resilience were tried, with emphasis on analysis of their differentiation from and relationships with frangibility, adaptability and sustainability. Meanwhile, a review was presented of quantitative evaluation and application of resilience from the angle of framework, indices and tools of the evaluation. In the end, for better understanding of the resilience in SESs outlooks on the future development tendency of the resilience are described in the aspects of connotation of resilience, quantitative evaluation and remediation practice of the degraded SESs.