Ground subsidences have, increasingly, been threatening Beijing severely in recent years. The environments and temporal-spatial distribution, as well as the causes are discussed in this paper. Furthermore, they are classified into two types: mining and engineering. The former is mainly distributed in the Mentougou valley of West Mountains, with mining depth, ore-body dip-angle, rainfall and drainage as the main causes, while the latter is in the urban area, with pipeline leak-erosion, groundwater overexploitation, improper construction methods and artificial vibration as the main causes.