Understanding the interaction between groundwater and surface water in permafrost regions is essential to study flood fre-quencies and river water quality, especially in the high latitude/altitude basins. The application of heat tracing method, based on oscillating streambed temperature signals, is a promising geophysical method for identifying and quantifying the interaction between groundwater and surface water. Analytical analysis based on a one-dimensional convective-conduc-tive heat transport equation combined with the fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing method was applied on a stream-bed of a mountainous permafrost region in the Yeniugou Basin, located in the upper Heihe River on the north Tibetan Plateau. The results indicated that low connectivity existed between the stream and groundwater in permafrost regions. The interaction between surface water and groundwater increased with the thawing of the active layer. This study demon-strates that the heat tracing method can be applied to study surface water-groundwater interaction over temporal and spa-tial scales in permafrost regions.