Abstract:Soil microbial biogeography is to study the spatial distribution pattern of soil microorganisms and their changes over time. Soil microbial biogeographical study can help to find out unknown biological resources in soils, to understand the mechanisms of formation and maintenance of microbial diversity in soils, and to predict the evolutional direction of terrestrial ecosystem functioning. Since the vast majority of soil microorganisms cannot be cultivated and the techniques for microbial community analysis are limited, soil microbial biogeography has lagged behind the biogeography of plants and animals for a long time. Since twenty-first century, the breakthrough of high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics analysis has brought unprecedented opportunities for soil microbial biogeography, making it a hot spot in the field of soil biology and microbial ecology in the world. In this paper, we expatiated the present research status of soil microbial biogeography, suggested the research direction and development trend, and prospected the future research in this field.