Reservoirs are constructed by damming a river man impermeable site usually with a channeled river water supply. Atthe early historical period, the reservoirs were mainly built for flow or flooding control, power generation, irrigation and navigation.However, these reservoirs- have been used to store water to meet the increasing demand of freshwater supply. As one special type ofartificial structures, a huge mount of reservoirs were built so that they have largely modified water cycling system and its ecologicalfunctions in our planet.China is not rich in fresh water, especially water pollution leading to total limiting capacity of water supplyeven in the Yangtze River and Pearl River catchments. Water supply by reservoirs has strongly supported a rapid social and eco-nomic development in the last 30 years in the country. In 1955,Dr. Liu Jiankang published the first ecological paper of reservoirorganisms for fishery resource in Acta Hydrobiologica Sinica, initiating the research of reservoir ecology or biological liamology in China. Historically, the reservoir ecology has developed over three distinct stages. From 1955 to 1975,it slowly and arduouslystarted to investigate aquatic organisms for fishery use. From 1976 to 2000, most reservoirs were intensively used for fish culture,the fish production nationally improved animal protein supply. However, water deterioration and degradation of ecological functionsresulted in decrease in fish production. Rapid increase in water supply finally leaded to appearance of the third stage highlightingmanagement of reservoir water quality since 2001.Water quality, eutrophication, environmental capacity and ecological regulationof hydrodynamics became key words in newly published literatures in the study of reservoir. Most publications of reservoirs focusedon large reservoirs for water supply in Yangtze River and Pearl River catchments. There have existed many researches of hydrologi-cal and hydrodynamics in the aspect of water resource, but not being widely shared and cited by reservoir ecologists yet. Many re-searches were still descriptive instead of experimental studies based on linmological hypotheses, but slowly changing. Regarding thehuge national demand in management of water quality and ecological protection,however, the prosperous future of reservoir ecologyand limnology can be expected in China.