Due to rapid population growth and urbanization, urban sewage sludge has become one of the most important environmental problems in many cities in the world, and improper management would cause serious environmental issues. Generally, sewage sludge contains macro and micro elements and organic matter, which are beneficial to soils and their productivity. In particular, sewage sludge can provide useful organic amendment in degraded soils to improve soil chemical and physical properties, such as soil structure and nutrient content. Nowadays, the use of sewage sludge as an organic fertilizer has become a common practice, however, sewage sludge derived from both industrial and domestic sources can often contain considerable amounts of heavy metals, pathogens and toxic organics, and the persistence and potential toxicity of these substances may pose a risk to ecosystems. Hence, the utilization of the sewage sludge safely has to be ensured by the preliminary treatment of sewage sludge. The recent advances of the application of sewage sludge to terrestrial ecosystems within four processes were reviewed as follow: (1) the sludge treatment and disposal technologies; (2) the application of sewage sludge to agricultural ecosystems, grassland ecosystems and forest ecosystems; (3) the effects of sewage sludge on soil ecosystem, including soil chemical and physical properties, soil enzymes and soil microorganisms；(4）the environmental effects of sewage sludge application. Finally, some important research fields and trends related to the disposal and application of sewage sludge in the future were also proposed.