The methods of impervious surface extraction and its applications is a focus in many fields, such as urban planning, heat island effect analysis, water environment monitoring and water resources management. The development of remote sensing technology provides new ideas to fast and accurate impervious surfaces extraction. The paper reviewed remote sensing methods of impervious surfaces extraction from aspects of image feature (spectral, spatial and geometric, temporal features), classifier (supervised, unsupervised), and spatial scale (pixel, subpixel), and also reviewed applications of impervious surface information to urbanization monitoring, population estimation, water environment monitoring, heat island impact, and hydrometeorologic modeling. Image feature is the base of remote sensing, and classifier is the tool to operate image features while consideration of spatial scale can reduce the influence of mixed pixel. They three together provided a profound understanding in advantages and disadvantages of each remote sensing method. Classifier optimization, image multifeatures integration, and physical characteristics differentiation among impervious surface materials would be the trend of impervious surface extraction based on remote sensing.