Biogeographic model has been used as an important tool for conservation planning. We discuss the background of biogeographic model development and find it has mostly contributed to both fundamental and applied research in biogeography and ecology. And its development is in need of theory and application. The challenges are discussed in this paper, especially when the problems happened during the model application such as false absences and false presences in species data, and key environmental variables selection. We prospect the development of biogeographic model in the future: it needs to couple climatic model and biogeochemical model. We selectively review the literature of biogeographic studies in arid and semiarid regions of China. It is very essential to understand the significance of biogeographic model for depicting biogeographic processes and conservation planning application. Our objective is to promote the modeling researches courses about biogeographic processes coupling with other relative processes.