Abstract Base on the papers presented during the International Symposium on Engineering and Environmental Geophysics (ISEEG'97) hold in Chengdu, China, a review on the progress and evolution of environmental and engineering geophysics is presented in the article. Much progress in resistivity tomography, ground-penetrating radar, seismic and EM tomography, nuclear tomography have been made in these years. Environmental geophysics is still in its initial stages. Greatattention should be paid to the studies on resistivity and EM imaging, surface waves imaging, techniques in the detection and monitoring of contamination, remote sensing techniques for the monitoring of contamination, mine geophysical technique and subaqueous geophysical technique.