Abstract: Over the last few decades the extent of land-use and vegetation composition has dramatically changed in the Loess Plateau. For a better understanding of the dynamics of rehabilitated grassland, carbon storage in vegetation and soil were studied in a space series of replaced time courses. The aboveground biomass carbon did not directly increase at the beginning stage of succession, but decreased to its lowest point in the second year following abandonment. After abandonment for 22 to 32 years, the aboveground biomass carbon increased to a steady state and after abandonment for 40 and 60 years, it approached a second steady state. The dynamics of root biomass carbon was similar to that of aboveground biomass carbon. Between abandonment ages 12 and 28 years, the root biomass carbon reached a steady state and between abandonment ages 32 and 60 years, the root biomass carbon approached a second steady state. Compared with cropland, the rehabilitated grassland had a lower soil organic carbon storage at the beginning (1-12 years) but after 15 years the soil organic carbon storage was higher than in cropland and had increased stably. In the 0 to 150 cm soil profile, the soil organic carbon content of the 0 to 15 cm layer was the highest. Our study indicated that in the early successional stage of rehabilitated grassland, the aboveground biomass carbon, root biomass carbon and soil organic carbon storage did not increase, but remained at a low-level for about 10 years. Further study is required to work out how to reduce this delay.