Abstract: To explore the relationship between soil factors and plant functional groups (PFGs), research sample plots were set up under the degraded alpine meadow. Plant community characteristics and soil physic-chemical properties as well as their redundancy analysis (RDA) were determined. The results showed that with the aggravation of degradation, the important values of cyperaceae and gramineae PFGs tended to decrease, while forbs PFGs increase; PFGs succession was from cyperaceae and gramineae to leguminosae and forbs; Further, soil organic carbon and nitrogen tended to decrease, while soil temperature and bulk density tended to increase. From RDA, the first and second axises explained the 97.1% of PFGs variation and the relationship of 99.6% between PFGs and soil factors. Soil water content and total nitrogen showed positive correlation with the first axis, while soil bulk density and soil temperature showed negative correlation with the first axis, which indicate that various soil factors have different marginal effects. Soil water and total nitrogen contents had significant effects on the distribution of PFGs (P < 0.01). The correlation coefficients between cyperaceae important value and soil total nitrogen as well as soil water content were 0.960 and 0.959, respectively (P < 0.01). The correlation coefficients between gramineae important value and soil water content as well as organic carbon were 0.937 and 0.929, respectively (P < 0.01). Soil bulk density and water content had important effects in leguminosae and forbs PFGs. In conclusion, there existed correlation between PFGs and soil factors in degraded alpine meadows, and various soil factors showed different effects on PFGs, which were more sensitive to the changes of soil total nitrogen and soil water content.