Disturbances significantly influent the species composition, age structure and functions of forest ecosystem, and therefore play important roles in forest regeneration, community succession, and maintenance of species diversity and are a base for the structure and function development of forest ecosystem. Reconstruction of the disturbance occurrence in time and space could help us to know the pattern and mechanism of disturbance occurrence and provide reference for predicting future disturbance occurrence, which is an important for understanding forest community dynamics and executing forest managements. Tree rings, as a natural recorder of the tree growth process, could be used to reconstruct the spatial and temporal patterns of forest disturbance history in different scales, therefore tree rings were an unreplaced material for reconstructing the forest dynamic history. Impacts of disturbance on individual trees can be divided into direct injury and growth interference. Methods reconstructing disturbance history vary depending on different disturbance types. For example, stem scars could be used to reconstruct the times and span of disturbances, such as fires and landslides, which caused direct injury to stems. Growth disturbance, such as the insects outbreak, changes the normal growth, and the disturbance time and intensity can be determined through the abnormal growth phenomena including suppression and release.. However, destructive disturbance in the forest communities might destroy most of trees, and therefore the disturbance time can be only determined by using the trees recruitment time peak. There are many studies carried out in Europe and north American by using tree rings to reconstruct forest disturbance history and the dynamic of forest ecosystem, such as fire, insects outbreaks, geological and meteorological disasters. However in China, the study of dendroceology is at initial stage, and few research focuses on the relationship between tree rings and the forest disturbance. In this paper we review the applications of tree rings in reconstructing forest disturbances, and summarize the reconstruction methods and the research progress to provide reference for future reconstruction of disturbances.