Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) is one of the Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) system which has been widely used for measuring three-dimensional (3D) structure of forests, yet it has not been used for the desert riparian forests systematically. In this study, TLS (Riegl VZ-1000, Austria) was applied for measuring the growth parameters of Populus euphratica riparian forests in the lower reaches of the Tarim River, northwestern China. We chose eight forest sample plots, which contained 513 individual trees, with different vertical distances from the river bank and acquired point cloud data. The biometric parameters of every single tree were extracted by establishing crown height model (CHM) and Hough transform methods. At the same time, the parameters measured by TLS were compared with the manual test value and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) image for verifying accuracy. The aim of this study is to explore the advantages and verifying accuracy of the TLS for riparian forest survey. We also analyzed the correlation between the parameters and impact of hydro-environmental factors which include the distance from river bank and ground water depth. Our results showed that: 1) TLS could acquire the majority of individual tree structure parameters at high precision about 94%-100%, higher than the results of UAV. 2) The correlation with manual test value of tree height (TH), diameter at breast height (DBH), crown diameter (CD) and crown area (CA) were 0.95, 0.97, 0.77 and 0.84, respectively. It showed that there was no significant difference between the hand-measured data and the TLS-obtained data. 3) There were significant positive correlation between TH and CD, CA of P. euphratica individual trees in our sample plots. The best correlation model is: TH=2.6274×CD^0.706, R²=0.64. 4) According to P. euphratica age group divided by DBH grade, the near mature trees (DBH: 15-30 cm) occupied the highest proportion (47%). It indicated that the age structure of P. euphratica population was relatively stable and the overall situation was satisfying, and demonstrated the hysteresis effects of man-made ecological water conveyance since 2001 and the restoration trends of P. euphratica riparian forest ecosystem along the Tarim River. In short, the LiDAR technology can objectively reflect the biometric and structure parameters of P. euphratica forest, which can substitute the traditional tree measurement methods that are labor-intensive, cost-intensive and time-consuming. TLS can provide high-precision information for monitoring the tree growth and vitality dynamics of P. euphratica riparian forests, and provide a useful tool and scientific basis for the effective protection and sustainable management of desert riparian forests in arid areas.