Soil moisture is an important basis for sustainable use of land,planning and manage-ment of water resources and water-saving technique in agriculture,so soil moisture has become one of the focuses in the study of Global Climate Change.According to the soil moisture data at 43 national level agrometeorological stations and based on Sufer7.0 technology,the seasonal and vertical variations of soil water contents between different dry farming areas during the last 20 years are compared in this report.The results indicate that (1)Soil moisture increases gradually from dry semi-arid area to semi-arid area,dry semi-humid area and semi-humid area,and the dru-ness is more serious in dry semi-arid area and semi-arid area than that in dry semi-humid area and semi-humid area because of the long period of soil moisture loss and large quantity of water consumption.(2)In views of vertical changes of soil moisture,it is showed that the variation range of upper layers is greater than that of lower in the different dry farming areas in the Yellow River Basin.Moreover,the variation range from 0-5cm to 50-100cm reduces gradually from arid area,dry semi-arid area,semi-arid area,dry semi-humid area to semi-humid area.Moreover,the variation tendency of soil moisture from top to bottom can be divided into three types i.e.,increasing type,reducing type and fluctuating type.(3)The vertical changing range of soil moisture in the Yellow River Basin can be roughly divided into three layers;the active changing layer lying between 0-30cm,the slow changing layer between 30-100cm,and the relatively stable layer under surface soil of 100cm.Moreover,the thickness of active changing layer increased gradually from arid area to semi-humid area and changed from 0-5cm to 0-30cm.