Mountain system provides an ideal space for global change research. In this paper, the authors present a retrospect of global change research in mountain system including some important meetings and programs, research on environment factors and carbon cycle in mountain system which is a hotspot recent years, and put forward the significant content of further research on mountain environment. As suggested, Chinese scientists involved on mountain environmental research should pay more attention on the following three aspects: 1) long term monitoring and analysis of environmental indices variation; 2) comprehensive research on physical, chemical and biological processes in mountain system; and 3) integrated studies of mountain environment based on models.