Wetland degradation is the core issue of wetland science field. In lakeside wetland Napahai of northwest Yunnan Plateau, wetlands degradation was mainly caused by three types of human disturbance, including cutting off water supply, overgrazing and hogging. Based on the field survey of wetland ecological characteristics and environmental quality, eighteen degraded wetland plots were set up along the three human disturbance gradients on Napahai wetland area in 2011. The degradation characteristics of wetland vegetation and soil as well as the associated key ecological factors were investigated in the present paper. Among the three types human disturbance, the number of wetland plant community diversity, richness, number of species, Shannon-Wiener index, important value (IV) of helophyte plant and soil characteristics including organic matter, total nitrogen, available nitrogen, water content and porosity were highest in cutting off water supply, followed by overgrazing and lowest in hogging, whereas the order was opposite for soil bulk density, total potassium. The lowest community height was observed in hogging disturbance. The eighteen typical wetland plots were classified into five types by TWINSPAN, including primary wetland, lightly degraded wetland, moderately degraded wetland,severely degraded wetland and extremely degraded wetland. Pearson correlation analysis showed that water content was significantly and negatively correlated to bulk density and organic matter was positively correlated to total nitrogen among these three transects. The rest of indexes correlation varied greatly under different human disturbance among transects, which means human disturbance has seriously changed the soil physicochemical properties, especially hogging. CCA analysis was employed to test the effect of soil physicochemical factors on Ⅳ of plant species, which involved thirty-eight species variables and eleven soil variables. The correlation coefficient between vegetation characteristics and soil physicochemical properties was above 0.950, with the first two axis eigenvalue 0.811 and 0.613, respectively. The CCA results showed that plant community composition of Napahai lakeside degraded wetland was positively correlated to soil water content and negatively correlated to soil total phosphorus content. The soil degradation index was used to reflect the degree of soil degradation, with the primary wetland plot as reference. Then soil degradation index was-7.40%,-14.53%,-45.01% for cutting off water supply, overgrazing and hogging transects, respectively. This suggests that the soil was seriously degraded under human disturbance, especially hogging disturbance. Through analyses of TWINSPAN classification, soil degradation index, the change of plant community characteristic and soil physicochemical properties, degradation of wetland vegetation and soil in Napahai lakeside wetland were simultaneously dominated by three types disturbance, the order of human disturbance degree was hogging, overgrazing, cutting off water supply. Soil water content and total phosphorus content were the driven forces that caused the wetland degradation in Napahai lakeside wetland. Understanding driving factors of wetland degradation is a key step towards wetland ecosystems restoration and biodiversity conservation. Different intensity and type of human disturbance have different ecological influences on plant community characteristic, soil physicochemical properties and their interrelation. Therefore, comparing the effects among different human disturbances on the wetland plant community characteristics and soil properties can provide a theoretical basis for reasonable utilization and restoration of Napahai wetland.