Abstract: The basin of Heihe River is located in arid area of inland China.The surface water and groundwater in different landscape units has occured a large number,regular and duplicate transformation process,which has greatly improved the utilization of water resources.Early in the eighties of last century,Geology and Mineral Resources Bureau (GMRB) of Gansu Province and other institutions firstly launched the "Seventh Five-Year" and "Eighth Five-Year" scientific and technological projects which researched into the surface water and groundwater transformation mechanism in the Heihe river basin,and got a rich exploration research,promoted the rational development and utilization of limited water resources in the area; since the beginning of this century,as survey theory has been enriched and environmental isotope techniques has been widely utilized,loop transformation of surface water and groundwater resources in Heihe river basin is widely paidattention to in the academic community,and a number of high level academic results have been completed and published,and all these work make the water resources development and protection in the arid area to move forward a single step.However,there are still many short comings,such as conversion and transformation relations of water resources is lack of systematic research,deep groundwater recharge can't be determined from the direction in middle and lower reaches of basin,etc; this isn't conducive to coordination of water utilize contradiction between the economic development and ecological protection.