Soil respiration, as an important source of atmospheric carbon oxide (CO₂), has received considerable attention in the recent years. Changes in land use or soil management practices affect the status of soil organic carbon (SOC), and hence alter CO₂ emissions from terrestrial ecosystems into the atmosphere. Soil respiration rates as well as soil temperature and moisture were measured with closed chamber-chromatographic technique at three plots with different land-use (i.e., forest, grassland and rotated upland cropland) in an experimental station of CERN (Chinese Ecosystem Research Net) located in the Central Sichuan Basin. Over the studied period, soil respiration rates varied from 78.63 to 577.97 mg CO₂ m^-2 h^-1 at the forest plantation, from 39.28 to 584.18 mg CO₂ m^-2 h^-1 at the grassland plot, and from 34.48 to 484.65 mg CO₂ m^-2 h^-1 at the cropland plot. The seasonal variations of the soil respiration rates measured across the three plots showed a similar pattern with a single peak occurred in the summer and a depression in the winter. The relationship of soil respiration rate (R) with soil temperature (T) and soil moisture (W) fit well to the equation R = aebTwc (a, b, c were constants). The results indicated that soil temperature and soil moisture together could explain 64%-90% of the seasonal variations in soil respiration rate. The temperature dependence of soil respiration (Q₁₀) has been widely used in estimating soil respiration rate. This parameter has commonly been treated as a constant near to 2.0 in many ecosystem models although it has been documented that Q₁₀ value varies with temperature and moisture. Owing to the nonlinear relationship between Q₁₀ and respiration rate, a small change in Q₁₀ could cause a significant variation in the modeled soil respiration flux. Therefore, accurately quantifying Q₁₀ and its variability is crucial for estimating ecosystem carbon budget. Our research showed that the Q₁₀ values were positively related to the moisture in the top soil (0-10 cm) and negatively related to the soil temperature at 5 cm depth. Based on the equation shown above, 1℃ increase in soil temperature at 5 cm depth will reduce the Q₁₀ value by 0.08, 0.06 and 0.07 for the forest, grassland and cropland plots, respectively; and 1% decrease in soil moisture will reduce the Q10 value by 0.14, 0.10 and 0.11 for the forest, grassland and cropland plots, respectively. The modifications with the Q₁₀ value will make the calculated soil respiration rates more reliable.