The Stone Forest Global Geopark is located in Shilin Yi Nationality Autonomous County, Kunming city, Yunnan Province, China, between the latitudes 24°38' N and 24° 56' N and the longitudes 103°16'E and 103°29' E.

The geopark lies also at the west of southwest karst terrain of China, which is the largest single karst expanse in the world covering over 800,000km. Three most typical karst landforms: stone forest karst, tower karst, and cone karst developed in China's southwest karst terrain. The Stone Forest Geopark is right the locality where the stone forest karst occurred.

The geopark is positioned 78km southeast of Kunming, capital city of Yunnan province, and 5km of northeast Shilin county seat. The Stone Forest area lies at a traffic junction of eastern Yunnan, two highways (No.324 state highway and provincial highway from Shilin to Anning) and a railway (between Kunming and Nanning) traverse the adjoining Lunan basin. Twenty kilometers further west, in the neighboring Yiliang County, the only narrow gauge railway in China built more than one hundred years ago is still in use. In history the Naigu Stone Forest, northern part of the geopark, used to be an important communication hub between Yunnan and Guizhou and Guangxi. Ancient post roads can be easily recognized in some areas.