The water resources ecological footprint is an important index to measure the sustainable development of water resources.The paper studied the situation of water ecological footprint and used LMDI method to analyze the factors that impact the water ecological footprint in Dongguan.The result showed that during the period of 2000 to 2011,the water ecological footprint of Dongguan presented a trend of first rapid rise and then slow decline.The economic effect is the main factor to promote the development of water ecological footprints.The water footprint technical effect is a key factor to restrain the growth of water ecological footprint.The effects of water footprint structure and population encouraged the growth of water ecological footprint to a certain extent.