Abstract: Soil organic carbon can provide the nutrient for plant growth and maintain soil physical structure well, and soil organic carbon (C) pool is so large to lead to big changes in CO₂ concentration in atmosphere even its changes are small, thus soil organic C pool has a direct effect on the global C balance. Nitrogen (N) is recognized as the primary limiting nutrient for plant growth in terrestrial ecosystems. Atmospheric N deposition and anthropogenic N input are important N sources to terrestrial ecosystems, whose alteration will profoundly change plant growth and net primary production in terrestrial ecosystems, accordingly impacts global C cycles and other ecosystem processes. Ecological scholars in European countries and the United States have carried on a series of extensive and in-depth studies on the effects of N input on various types of ecosystem C pools during the past 20 years. Chinese scholars, in recent years, also turned their attention to the study of N input’s impacts on the terrestrial C cycle processes, and have made a lot of research advances. Nevertheless, the effect of N deposition and anthropogenic N input and its intensity on C cycles are still a weakest part among the studies on the four main C sink mechanisms. In view of this, this article reviews and analyses the influences of atmospheric N deposition on the total organic C (TOC), dissolved organic C (DOC) and microbial biomass C (MBC) in the soil pool of terrestrial ecosystem, and puts forward some prospects on the problems existed in present researches, which had the potential to be a reference for the further study carried out in the future in China.