Abstract:In mountain ecosystems, smaller differences in elevation gradients can cause significant differences in environmental factors such as soil moisture, environmental temperature, and radiation intensity, as well as natural landscapes. Under global climate change, the habitats of alpine plants are extremely susceptible to climate change. Studying the altitude adaptation mechanism and ecological balance of alpine plants can provide ideas for the formulation of biodiversity conservation strategies, introduction and cultivation, and global climate change response strategies. The mechanism of plant altitude adaptation is a precise and complex regulatory system, but with the development of life sciences and the increasing innovation of research technology, research routes can be provided from different technical levels according to the actual needs and research objectives of researchers. Therefore, the previous research on the altitude adaptation mechanisms of alpine plants were overviewed from the perspective of different research methods or technical routes (morphological characteristics and traits, physiological and biochemical indicators, metabolic pathways and products, genomics and proteomics). Different research methods were used to classify and summarize the general rules of adaptability mechanisms of alpine plants from different levels. At the same time, different research results were used to confirm each other or further analyze the adaptive mechanism at a deeper level. Finally, based on the above overview, potential future research directions are proposed to provide reference for future research at different levels and perspectives.