Different types of vegetation occupy different geomorphology and water gradient environments in the San-jiang Plain,indicating that the soil moisture dynamics and water balance patterns of the different vegetation communi-ties might differ from each other.In this paper,a lowland system,perpendicular to the Nongjiang River in the Honghe National Nature Reserve(HNNR),was selected as the study area.The area was occupied by the non-wetland plant forest and the typical wetland plant meadow.The Microsoft Windows-based finite element analysis software package for simulating water,heat,and solute transport in variably saturated porous media(HYDRUS),which can quantita-tively simulate water,heat,and/or solute movement in variably-saturated porous media,was used to simulate soil moisture dynamics in the root zone(20-40 cm) of those two plant communities during the growing season in 2005.The simulation results for soil moisture were in a good agreement with measured data,with the coefficient of determi-nation(R2) of 0.44-0.69 and root mean square error(RMSE) ranging between 0.0291 cm3/cm3 and 0.0457 cm3/cm3,and index of agreement(d) being from 0.612 to 0.968.During the study period,the volumetric soil moisture content of meadow increased with the depth and its coefficient of variation decreased with the depth(from 20 cm to 40 cm),while under the forest the soil moisture content at different depths varied irregularly.The calculated result of water budget showed that the water budget deficit of the meadow was higher than that of the forest,suggesting that the meadow is more likely to suffer from water stress than the forest.The quantitative simulation by HYDRUS in this study did not take surface runoff and plant growth processes into account.Improved root water uptake and surface runoff models will be needed for higher accuracy in further researches. Different types of vegetation occupy different geomorphology and water gradient environments in the San-jiang Plain, indicating that the soil moisture dynamics and water balance patterns of the different vegetation communi-ties might differ from each other. In this paper, a lowland system, perpendicular to the Nongjiang River in the Honghe National Nature Reserve (HNNR), was selected as the study area. The area was occupied by the non-wetland plant forest and the typical wetland plant meadow. The Microsoft Windows-based finite element analysis software package for simulating water, heat, and solute transport in variably saturated porous media (HYDRUS), which can quantita-tively simulate water, heat, and / or solute movement in variably-saturated porous media, was used to simulate soil moisture dynamics in the root zone (20-40 cm) of those two plant communities during the growing season in 2005. The simulation results for soil moisture were in a good agreement with measured data, with the coefficient of de Termi-nation (R2) of 0.44-0.69 and root mean square error (RMSE) ranging between 0.0291 cm3 / cm3 and 0.0457 cm3 / cm3, and index of agreement (d) being from 0.612 to 0.968. soil moisture content of meadow increased with the depth and its coefficient of variation decreased with the depth (from 20 cm to 40 cm), while under the forest the soil moisture content at different depths varied irregularly.The calculated result of water budget curve that the water budget deficit of the meadow was higher than that of the forest, suggesting that the meadow is more likely to suffer from water stress than the forest. The quantitative simulation by HYDRUS in this study did not take surface runoff and plant growth processes into account. Improved root water uptake and surface runoff models will be needed for higher accuracy in further researches.