Coarse woody debris (CWD) is an important and particular component of forest ecosystems and is extremely important to forest health. This review describes the decomposition process, decomposition model and influence factors. CWD decomposition is a complex and continuous process and characterizes many biological and physical processes, including biological respiration, leaching, and fragmentation.All these processes have closed relationships between each other and work synergistically. During decomposition, there are many controlling factors mainly including site conditions (temperature, humidity, and O2/CO2 concentration), woody substrate quality (diameter, species and compound) and organism in CWD. The decomposition rate is generally expresses through a constant k which indicate the percent mass,volume or density loss over time, and can be determined by long-term monitoring, chronosequence approach and the radio between input and the total mass. Now using mathematical models to simulate decomposition patterns and estimate the decomposition rate is widely applied, especially the exponential model. We brought forward that managing and utilizing for the CWD in forest was a primary objective on all forest lands. And it is should be intensified to integrate many related research subjects and to carry a comprehensive, long-term and multi-scale research which mainly focus on seven sections.