Abstract: River is an important water source for human living and production.Management of its water quality and pollution sources is one of the major tasks of river basin management of water environment.All rivers in a river basin form a river network.Some kinds of GIS software provide a module specially for solving network-related issues.Based on an analysis of the features of river water environmental system,this paper studies the method of application of GIS network analysis technology to river water pollution tracing,which include establishment of digital river network model and river water environmental database,integration of associated with river water environmental data,and implementation of river water pollution tracing.In addition,a prototype study has been carried out in the Hanjiang River basin.