The management of water resources and vegetation restoration under the changing environment is a practical problem needing urgent attention in karst areas. Taking the typical vegetation types in the karst area of Shilin County, Yunnan Province as the research object, experimental plots were set up and field observations were carried out in the two rainy seasons of 2018-2019. The rainfall distribution and convergence laws of different vegetation types were explored respectively. The results show that Shilin area was controlled by the Asian monsoon, and the annual variation of precipitation presented significant monsoon characteristics. The precipitation mainly concentrated in the rainy season, especially from May to August, dominated by light rain and moderate rain, with the proportion of 70% and 15% respectively in the annual precipitation events. The throughfall of canopy layer, stem flow and interception of different vegetation types all increased with the increase of the rainfall outside of the forest, and the distribution of rainfall was outside rainfall > throughfall > interception > stem flow. The runoff coefficients of different vegetation types varied greatly, the range of variation was 0.01%-0.36%, with that of rocky desertification bare area being the largest and that of slope farmland being the smallest, but on the whole, the values are all meagre. The threshold range of runoff was 2.0-6.4 mm, with the increase of outside rainfall, the surface runoff of all plots also showed an increasing trend. The results can provide scientific basis for the management of water resources as well as the restoration and conservation of ecological environment in karst areas.