As a global issue, ecological restoration demands for urgent practice and research in the way of Ecological Civilization construction and green development in China. In a narrow sense, ecological restoration mainly refers to ecological engineering and environmental protection measures. In the face of increasingly complex, systematic and regional ecological problems, it has become a consensus to implement multi-scale, multi-path and multi-element systematic ecological restoration. Aiming at the area along the Yangtze River in Jiangsu province, which is the most contradictory area between ecological protection and economic development, this paper used the methods of qualitative and quantitative to identify ecological problems, and used the relevant theories and methods of land use science, landscape ecology and human-land system to construct the evaluation system of ecological restoration potential from the perspective of "element-landscape-system". Based on Getis-Ord Gi* hot spot analysis and K-means cluster methods, this paper identified ecological restoration zones and hot spots, so as to build an ecological restoration pattern structure composed of points, lines (belts) and areas, and put forward corresponding countermeasures. The results show that: (1) Ecological restoration has multi-scale character, complex-objects character and multi-approaches character. Different scales of ecological restoration have different objects, approaches and objectives, which are connected by different levels and types of planning; (2) The average value of ecological restoration potential at the factor level of the study area is 0.460, and the spatial distribution is characterized by "large scale dispersion and small scale agglomeration". The hot spots of ecological restoration potential at the landscape level are distributed around the Yangtze River Estuary, and the cold spots are distributed in the Yang-Tai plain. According to the evaluation indexes of social economy, ecological function and planning response, the study area can be divided into five clusters; (3) According to the evaluation results, the ecological restoration structure of "five areas, three belts and two cores" can be constructed, and the countermeasures can be put forward in the aspects of development orientation, spatial control strategy, restoration object, engineering measures and so on. This study can provide reference for the compilation of ecological restoration planning of the area along the Yangtze River in Jiangsu province, the exploration of connotation and implementation paradigm.