Rainfall intercepting by vegetation plays an important role affecting the water balance at local and catchment scale due to the control that vegetation canopy exert by modifying both evaporation and the redistribution of incident rainfall. Qilian Mountain is source regions of Heihe River, Shiyang River and Shule River inland river basin. In consideration of widespread shrubs which account for 68% of the whole forest area of Qilian Mountain, the research on rainfall interception process of shrubs for understanding the impact of rainfall characteristics on alpine shrubs and revealing the mechanism of hydrologic cycle and water resources with the impact of the shrub canopy, especially in the mountainous regions of an inland river basin, is very important and necessary. This paper taked the four typical alpine shrubs Potentilla fruticosa, Salix cupularis, Hippophae rhamnoides, and Caragana jubata in Qilian Mountain as test objects, based on the field experimental data from June to October 2010, characteristics of rainfall interception and rainfall redistribution of four typical alpine shrubs in Qilian Mountain was investigated by permanent plot method, and impact of rainfall characteristics on rainfall redistribution of shrubs was analyzed by statistical method. The results indicated that the gross rainfall was 298. 6 mm during the experimental period. Rainfall was intercepted entirely by shrubs when rainfall is less than 2. 1 mm, gross rainfall

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