The global warming trends to be intensified with the increase of atmospheric CO_2,which has been become an important ecological environment problem worldwide.Soil is the largest source of CO_2 emission in forest ecosystem,and understanding the temporal-spatial dynamics and effecting mechanism of soil respiration is greatly significant for alleviating the global warming.As a complex biological process,soil respiration is affected by human activities,vegetation type,temperature,moisture,soil organisms and soil physical-chemical properties.Especially,soil respiration is sensitive to temperature with a large variation in space and time.The authors summarized the situations of soil respiration and its developing trend at home and abroad.It revealed the spatiotemporal variation of forest soil respiration,its temperature sensitivity and its influencing factors (e.g.,temperature,moisture,vegetation,microorganisms,pH,nitrogen,phosphorus of soils,fertilization,deforestation and plantation).The ecological process,space-time variation and influence mechanism of forest soil respiration were expounded,which would help to understand the position and role of forest ecosystem in the global carbon cycle,and to provide theoretical support in predicting future trend of global change.