Abstract: Interaction between carbon and water in forest ecosystem is a coupling process in terrestrial ecosystem, which is an indispensable aspect for the study of forest carbon pool, ecohydrological processes and the responses to global change. In the context of global change, the interaction and coupling of carbon and water in forest ecosystem has attracted much attention among scientists. In this paper, we reviewed the process mechanism of forest carbon and water relationships based on previous studies, which consisted of advance in forest water use efficiency, carbon and water interactions at different scales, scaling, and model simulation. We summed up the factors affecting forest water and carbon interaction, including water condition, carbon dioxide enrichment, warming, nitrogen deposition, ozone concentration variation, solar radiation, and altitudinal gradients. Finally, we discussed the problems in the previous studies, and prospected the possible future research fields, among which we thought the inherent dynamics mechanism and scaling of forest carbon and water interactions should be enhanced.