Abstract: Soil moisture plays a crucial role in connecting rainfall, runoff, and groundwater processes. Investigating the dynamic changes of soil water under different land use/covers is of great significance for understanding the mechanisms of the water cycle. Taking the Taihu Lake basin as a case study, this paper selects three representative underlying surfaces, i.e., urban green land, farmland, and forest land, to conduct continuous in-situ observations during 2018 and 2020. A method for identifying and extracting characteristics of soil moisture responses to rainfall events was proposed, and a total of 801 soil moisture responding events (with 1-hour interval) were observed. Then the response patterns of soil moisture and main influencing factors for typical underlying surfaces were revealed. The results suggest that the responses of soil moisture display distinct characteristics in vertical profile, and the peaks of soil moisture for 10cm, 20cm, and 40cm depth gradually increases (i.e., 25.90%, 28.06%, and 31.24%, respectively), while the increasement, rate of increase, and rate of recession of soil moisture gradually decrease. The responding time of soil moisture increases firstly and then decreases from the surface to the deep layers, and responding time of soil moisture for cultivated land and forest land in deep layer is faster than that of the middle layer, mainly due to the preferential flow effects influenced by large pores in soil. With the increase in rainfall intensity, all responding characteristics of soil moisture show a gradually increasing trend for different land use/covers. The dynamic changes of soil moisture in the Taihu Lake basin are influenced by multiple factors such as rainfall, soil parameters, vegetation, and antecedent wetness, however, the dominant factors for different responding characteristics vary. The antecedent wetness is the primary factor that influences the peaks, increasement and rate of increase of soil moisture. Specifically, a higher antecedent wetness leads to a greater soil moisture peaks, but a smaller increasement and rate of increase of soil moisture. These results could provide a reference for the analysis of water yield mechanisms under different land use/covers in the Taihu Lake basin, and support the agricultural production and water resources management.