The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in China has created a massive reservoir. The water level fluctuates between 145m and 175m, generating 348.9 km² of seasonally submerged riparian zone (Water Level Fluctuating Zone, WLFZ). This emergent WLFZ ecosystem is a type of transitional area between upland and water, and plays a significant role as exchange corridor of energy and substance between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem. The reversal of hydrologic regime has dramatically altered environmental conditions including soil structure, plant community in WLFZ ecosystem. WLFZ ecosystem's health and stability are threatened in TGR, which has the potential to endanger the vegetation and ecosystem in both riparian and WLFZ. The sensitive WLFZ ecosystem is becoming an emerging issue in the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR), where Chinese and other national government has established projects to understand and better manage the WLFZ. The status quo of WLFZ research in the TGR was assessed by critically reviewing current publication, which was collected from both CNKI database and Web of Science database. The key words used are three Gorges, water level fluctuating zone, riparian zone, drawdown zone, littoral zone, water level, hydro-change belt, Yangtze River, ecology restoration and management. Both Chinese and English literature reviews are included in this paper. The information collected was analyzed using bibliometrics, numbers of related papers per year, and details about institutions involved in the research. Furthermore, information extracted includes the research regions, trends and pilot studies. Our findings show that number of papers on WLFZ ecosystem gradually increased until 2008, however in post 2008 the growth rate of papers in this field rapidly increased and continues increase. To date, 436 papers in Chinese and 42 papers in English were published globally. The main research organizations are distributed among Chongqing Municipality, Hubei Province and Beijing Municipality. In terms of publication literature number, the first three organizations are Chongqing University, Northwest University and Chinese Academy of Sciences Wuhan Botanical Garden. The 14% of the papers in the field of WLFZ and ecology are present in the "Acta Ecologica Sinica", "Resource and Environment in the Yangtze Basin" and "Environmental Science", which are best ranked journals in field. "Acta Ecologica Sinica" mainly focuses on plants research, while publications from "Resource and Environment in the Yangtze Basin" cover a wide range of topics such as soil, ecological restoration and plants. Finally, "Environmental Science" is concerned with soil and environmental problems of WLFZ ecosystem. Ecology contains the broadest variety of subjects in WLFZ ecosystem research, however soil and plant subjects are commonly reported. Phosphorus, nitrogen and heavy mental transporting in soil environment is the main researched focus in biogeochemical process. Phosphorus and nitrogen forms, and sorption-release characteristics directly relate to environment problems such as eutrophication and algal bloom in the Three Gorges Reservoir areas. The majority of researchers are carrying field studies in the Pengxi River, which one of tributaries of TGR. The largest WLFZ in all tributaries of TGR is located on Pengxi River, which covers an area of 55.47 km² and accounts for 16.05% of the total area of WLFZ. Restoration and the long term sustainability of WLFZ ecosystem is a challenge for scientists and national governments. In the future, a long-term monitoring of WLFZ environments using remote sensing is needed in order to gain a deep understanding of the impact of water level change on the TGR region. Our review paper suggests that a concerted effect should made by the research community in the following areas on studying mechanism of energy and nutrient dynamics among water, soil and plants coupled with the specific hydrologic regime, and biogeochemical cycle phenomenon.