Abstract: The research on soil respiration has already started as early as the 20th century, and the research in foreign countries started earlier than that in China. At present, many studies have found that soil respiration has great temporal and spatial changes. In order to understand and explore the temporal and spatial changes of soil respiration more accurately, the related articles at home and abroad were reviewed, sorted out, summed up and summarized. Temporal changes mainly included diurnal changes, seasonal changes and inter-annual changes. Spatial variability mainly included four aspects: community level, landscape level, regional scale and biotic scale. Altitude gradient also affected soil respiration.