<p>The “Forest Village” model utilizes forests as a central medium, leveraging rural forest resources as a key asset for rural revitalization. Taking 1140 national forest villages in Southwest China as the research object, the spatial distribution characteristics of national forest villages in southwest China were analyzed from two dimensions, nature and village nature, using ArcGIS 10.8 tools with watersheds as the research unit. The two dimensions of nature and society and their influencing factors were identified by using a combination of methods such as spatial autocorrelation, the closest neighbor index, the standard deviation ellipse, kernel density analysis and OPGD. The results revealed the following: (1) It is sparsely in the west and densely in the east, featuring four high—density cores that radiate outward to the surrounding areas. (2) The most significant among these factors are socio—economic ones, such as GDP density and population density, which demonstrate the notable impact of human disturbances on rural distribution. (3) Among the natural factors, topography and climate exert the most significant influence. Among the remaining factors, the densities of the river network and road network are strongly influenced by urban development, showing a high degree of alignment with the distribution of other social factors.</p>