River ecosystems are closely linked to human economic and social development, which are the most ecosystems at risk on earth. The research of ecosystem services can provide important scientific references for the ecosystems utilization,protection and management. On basis of summarizing the basic theories,assessment frameworks,technical methods and application practices related with research findings of river ecosystem services both at home and abroad,the existing shortcomings such as weak research foundation,lack of scientific and reasonable methods in ecosystem service evaluation,narrow application scope of the research results were pointed out. In consideration of the needs of society and the research tendency,the future developing directions of river ecosystems service were described: the solid research foundation should be established by multi-disciplinary and multi-scale integrations, the standardized,normalized and scientific evaluation system for ecosystem services shall be built by innovating assessment framework and technical methodology systems comprehensively, the new research areas including trade-offs and commercialization of ecosystem services will be carried out widely to expand our research perspectives and enhance the application values of the results.