The river network structure has a significant influence on the flood regulation and water storage capacity of watershed, landscape pattern in watershed, flood and runoff processes, and the construction of pipeline network for water supply and drainage. Quantitative description methods for the river network structure are the premise and basis for a deep understanding of its changing rules. As there is no characteristic scale in the river network, fractal theory is widely used in the description of the characteristics of river network structure. This paper summarized the current advancement in fractal characteristics of river network structure in three aspects:
Establishment of fractal model for the description of river network structure and calculation of its parameters;
Analysis of factors influencing the fractal dimension of river networks;
Application of the fractal dimension of river networks. Based on the review and discussion from the three aspects, it is pointed out that the fractal approach is a theoretically attractive and potentially very effective framework in quantitative description and analysis of the river network structure. And the future direction is to propose a unified computation method for the fractal dimension, interpret multi-fractal characteristics of the river network structure, analyze the different influencing factors on the fractal dimension and reveal the relationship between the fractal dimension and the complicated regularities contained in physical phenomena.