Abstract: President Xi has emphasized that protecting the ecological environment of the Qinling Mountains holds great and far-reaching significance. The northern slope of the Qinling Mountains is characterized by its unique location, prominent functions, and complex human-land relationships. As a result, the increasing contradiction between the trend of small towns developing in a clustered and networked manner and the single ecological structure with fragile environment has become the weakest link restricting the construction of ecological civilization and high-quality development in the Qinling Mountains. This paper breaks through the barriers of single disciplines and examines the small town clusters and ecological communities on the northern slope of the Qinling Mountains as manifestations of human-land system interactions, based on the concept of "community" in ecology. By comprehensively applying theories and methodologies from geography, ecology, urban and rural planning, and other disciplines, it explores mechanisms and pathways to alleviate conflicts between small town development and ecological protection. The research indicates that:(1) The interaction between small town clusters and ecological communities on the northern slope of the Qinling Mountains involves diverse feedback elements. These elements can be categorized as follows: control elements centered on topography and landforms, which are fundamentally decisive and generally do not undergo significant changes; driving elements centered on small town clusters, which are traditional material factors that promote the development and transformation of small town clusters and determine their development level and scale; and potential elements centered on ecological communities, which are soft environmental factors that drive the development and transformation of small town clusters.(2) The interaction between small town clusters and ecological communities constitutes a complex system involving bidirectional feedback between human activities and natural processes It exhibits hierarchical and progressive characteristics, evolving from low-level and simple states to high-level and complex states. Furthermore, the basic states of mutual nesting, mutual restraint, and mutual promotion, along with nonlinear feedback cycles, enable the three major relationships of coexistence, common loss, and common prosperity in community feedback to evolve and shift.The proposal of the strategy of "mutual feedback and common prosperity, dynamic equilibrium " between small town clusters and ecological communities on the northern slope of the Qinling Mountains is an effective response to the flexibility in the spatial development of small town clusters and the foundational nature of ecological community protection and governance. By identifying "imbalances," it establishes self-healing and remedial mechanisms for stopping losses, filling gaps, and regulating the system.