Abstract: Riverscape ecology has emerged as a new paradigm for river science and its applications, but the discipline faces challenges before it can be considered a full-fledged academic discipline. We review riverscape ecological literature covering the period from 1986 through 2018. The logical necessity, major processes, study scopes, important theoretical advances, and current core issues of riverscape ecology are summarized. We found that a multi-scale, interdisciplinary, holistic view is required to understand rivers, and the need for landscape-scale insights into the problems faced by river-management projects has driven the rapid development of riverscape research. The central topic in riverscape ecology is to understand the structure, patterns, and functional processes of a river's physical landscape and biological system across multiple scales, with a particular emphasis on their interaction at different hierarchical levels. Some theoretical models have been developed to characterize the critical attributes of riverscapes, such as their multiple scales and hierarchies, pronounced dynamism, and marked directionality. We establish five core issues that must be addressed to advance the state of riverscape ecology study: improving and achieving a generally accepted riverscape classification system, advancing multi- and cross-scale studies, re-recognition of classic river ecology theories in the context of riverscape approaches, exploring and simulating riverscape mechanisms, and modeling responses of riverscapes to the climate changes and the regional land use/cover change.