Abstract: The forest litter layer is indispensible for the protection of forest soil, it plays an important role in forest soil and water conservation. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the variation laws of hydrological characteristics of forest litters in conifer and broad-leaved mixed forests at different successional stages in the northeast mountainous area of China. We investigated the forest litters in conifer and broad-leaved mixed forests at different successional stages in Jiaohe management bureau of forestry experimental area, Jilin Province. The litter samples were collected from middle-aged forest, near-mature forest and mature forest. Within each forest plot, a total of five square subplots with dimension of 20 cm×20 cm were set up using serpentine sampling method. The litters in the un-decomposed layer and semi-decomposed layer were taken back to lab for analyzing the hydrological characteristics of forest litters. The standard branch soaking method was used to calculate the storage of forest litters, water holding capacity, water holding rate, as well as the modified interception amount. For each sample, the litters were divided into four groups evenly and part of the litters was selected to measure the weight by electronic analytical balance, and then put in the 100-mesh nylon mesh. The soaking time was set as 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8 and 24 h, respectively. Combined with the field observation data, the relationship between the hydrological characteristics of forest litters and successional stages was analyzed. The litter storage of mature forest was the largest(7.26 t/hm²), followed by near-mature forest(4.56 t/hm²), and middle age forest(3.68 t/hm²).The order of the maximum water holding capacity was as follows: mature forest(21.23 t/hm²)>near-mature forest(35.24 t/hm²)>middle-aged forest(47.71 t/hm²)and the maximum water holding rate was 844.72% in mature forest, 742.58% in near-mature forest, and 592.02% in middle-aged forest, respectively.The descending order of the modified interception amount was mature forest(31.32 t/hm²), near-mature forest(20.52 t/hm²), and middle-aged forest(11.98 t/hm²). The soaking experiment demonstrated that both water holding capacity and water holding rate had remarkable logarithmic correlation with soaking time, while the absorption rate and soaking time was of a power function. The water holding capacity of mature forest was the largest, followed by near-mature forest and middle age forest. This is due to the fact that along with the forest succession the forest crown tends to close, the understory species becomes rich and nutrients increase, therefore the water holding capacity of forest litter layers increase gradually. The orders of maximum water holding capacity, maximum water holding rate and litter storage volume were consistent among different forest successional stages, which indicated that the there were strong correlation between water holding capacity and water holding rate with litter storage volume. The higher the litter storage volume, the higher the water holding capacity and water holding rate.