The riparian plant community,which contains various ecological,aesthetic,economic benefits,is a critical element of the riparian ecosystem. Recently, the global climate change, extreme weather events and human activities have been threatening the riparian plant community stability, while resilience as a significant characteristic can adapt the community to disturbances. Thus, more and more researchers have been engaged to the study of the resilience of riparian plant community. The paper reviewed the latest international researches in this field, explained several important concepts, and concluded the main indicators and methods to measure and assess the resilience in terms of adaptive capacity,regimes shift,and threshold determination. Then, we analyzed the effect of external disturbances on the resilience from the 3 aspects, i. e. , exotic invasive plants, extreme weather events and the river flow regime. Finally, we prospected the future research on the resilience connotation,measurement indicators and methods improvement, and external disturbances.