Soil water is an important element in water circulation system. Yellow soil is a kind of zonal soils forming in subtropical zone humid climate. Investigating the effect of vegetation coverage on soil water in yellow soil region is of great significance to hydrological processes research, soil and water conservation, water resources utilization. By setting runoff plots filling with yellow soil with different vegetation coverage and analyzing average value and change factor of soil moisture in these runoff plots, the results indicated that: with vegetation coverages of 75%, 70%, 50% and 10%, the average soil moisture was 43.04%, 44.34%, 43.33% and 46.59%, respectively. The maximum and average value of soil moisture, range and speed of soil moisture changes had negative relationships with vegetation coverage. With the vegetation coverage of 75%, 70%, 50% and 10%, accumulated value of time of peak soil moisture was 157 h, 155 h, 154 h and 150 h, respectively. Therefore, there was a obvious hysteretic effect of response of soil water to precipitation when vegetation coverage was large. At each vegetation coverage, soil moisture was positively correlated with temperature significantly (P=0.05), indicating that soil moisture showed downtrend from September to December. In conclusion, in the study period, dynamic characteristic of soil moisture in runoff plots filling with yellow soil was mainly effected by precipitation. The main reason of the difference of soil moisture in the condition of various vegetation coverage was the difference of precipitation interception.