The soil ecosystem of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau ecosystem represents a huge pool of carbon and nitrogen. The emission of its organic carbon pool and total nitrogen pool greatly affects the concentration of greenhouse gases, such as CO_2, CH_4 and N_2O in the atmosphere and thus might have an impact on global climate change. In order to identify the different factors which control the carbon and nitrogen distribution in soils developed under different vegetation covers and types, 75 surface soil samples were collected along an altitude gradient in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau from July to October 2013. The sampling sites were categorized according to the type of vegetation and cover in alpine meadow, alpine steppe, desert, shrubland, forest, and saline-alkali land. For each site, the soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) contents were analyzed along with different parameters. The Least Significant Difference (LSD) method was used to compare the differences of SOC, TN contents and omega(C)/omega(N) ratios measured in the topsoil samples for different categories of vegetation types. In addition, we performed a statistic analysis based on Pearson Correlation and Stepwise Regression Analysis (SRA), to identify the factors controlling the OC and TN contents as well as the omega(C)/omega(N) ratios of the soils . The results showed that the type of vegetation influences the SOC and TN contents of the soils. The highest SOC and TN contents were observed for the alpine meadow, with an average content of 1.38 g·kg~(-1) and 0.23 g·kg~(-1), respectively, whereas the lowest SOC and TN contents were measured in the desert soils with an average content of 1.38 g·kg~(-1) and 0.23 g·kg~(-1), respectively. Except for several samples collected in forest lands which display omega(C)/omega(N) ratio larger than 25.00, the omega(C)/omega(N) ratio of most of the samples were in the range of 4.00~25.00. In addition, the average value of the omega(C)/omega(N) ratios in the soils of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was higher than that in China. The SRA showed that soil carbon and nitrogen contents on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau were influenced by multiple environmental factors. The impact of environmental factors on SOC content were in order of importance: Alkalinity (Alk)>pH value>clay content, whereas for the TN content, these factors ranked in the following order: Alk>clay content>pH value. However, the omega(C)/omega(N) ratio was mainly controlled by the Average Monthly Temperature (AMT).