Abstract: Global change and its possible impacts on ecosystems, especially terrestrial ecosystems, have seriously affected the human life-supporting environment and the sustainable development of social economics. It has drawn more and more attention from the governments, scientists and the public. the advance in the study on terrestrial ecosystems and global change (climate change, atmospheric composition change and land use change) has been reviewed in this paper from three aspects: the processes and mechanisms of the interaction between terrestrial ecosystems and global change, possible effects of global change on Chinese terrestrial ecosystems and the feedback of changing terrestrial ecosystems on global change including terrestrial carbon cycling. The processes and mechanisms of the impacts of global change on terrestrial ecosystems would be given from plant ecophysiology, growth and development, allocation, water use efficiency and the metabolisms of carbon and nitrogen by doubled CO2, raising temperature, water change, UV-Bradiation and O3 changes as well as human interference (land use change). The results indicated that the effects of global change on different plant species are different, and the adaptation strategies of different plant species should also be different. The responses of vegetation, forest ecosystems, grassland ecosystems and agricultural ecosystems to global change were described by their geographical distributions, phenology, structure and function as well as theire-cosystem stability. The results suggested that different vegetation types/terrestrial ecosystems have differentre-sponses to global climate change, however there is a large uncertainties for their responses.