Soil and vegetation are the foundation of maintaining riparian ecosystem services, and their spatial distribution and variations can determine the effects of ecological functions. In the present study, selecting the typical reach of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River as the study area, the spatial distributions of riparian soil physicochemical properties and their response to environmental factors were analyzed by employing methods of field investigation, experimental analysis, and redundancy analysis (RDA). The results showed that soil particle was composed significantly of silt in the study area, with the increase of riparian buffer distance, soil bulk density increased initially and then decreased, whereas soil moisture showed the opposite pattern. Changes in total soil phosphorus (TP), available phosphorus (AP), total carbon (TC), total organic carbon (TOC), total nitrogen (TN); ammonium nitrogen (NH₄⁺-N) and nitrate nitrogen (NO₃⁻-N) contents under different riparian buffer distance showed no statistically significant differences. The spatial distribution of soil chemical properties was generally insignificantly different through changes between two vegetation types. Pearson correlation analysis showed that there was close relationship between soil physical and chemical properties, therein, TOC content in the study area was positively and significantly related to TN (P < 0.01), NO₃⁻-N (P < 0.01, and NH₄⁺-N (P < 0.05) contents, respectively. Both the TN and TOC contents were significantly negatively related to sand content (P < 0.01), while was significantly positively related to clay content (P < 0.01), indicating that high sand content cou ld pormote poro9sity and permeability of soil and then accelerate the degradation rate of organic matters in soils. In addition, the results of RDA indicated that TOC and NH₄⁺-N contents increased with increasing the height and coverage of the tree layer. Soil TP and NO₃⁻-N contents increased with increasing the plant diameter at breast height (DBH) of the tree layer and coverage of the herb layer. Meanwhile, with the increase of elevation gradient, the content of soil NH₄⁺-N presented an increasing trend, indicating that soil properties were significantly influenced by the effects of community structure and elevation gradient in the study area.