Designing regional pattern is challenging for ecosystem restoration both in theory and in practice. The present study proposed a new approach to design regional pattern for ecosystem restoration with a case in the arid valley of Upper Minjiang River, SW China. The procedures are: (1) Determine the regional pattern of main environmental factors based on the relationships between the important environmental factors and the main geographical factors generated from DEM data. (2) Overlay the maps of the main environmental factors. (3) Generate a lookup table according to the species selection rule we proposed to link the candidate restoration species to the main environmental factors.(4) Determine the regional pattern of ecosystem restoration by positioning the restoration species in the map of environmental factors according to the lookup table. The regional restoration pattern designed in this way would be applicable not only to restoring a region, but also to predicting the future landscape change.