Partitioning soil respiration into root respiration, rhizomicrobial respiration and basal microorganism respiration is of important significance in ecological and pedological studies. The method of δ¹³C natural abundance is an ideal way in microbial biomass research to partition rhizosphere respiration into root respiration and rhizomicrobial respiration; however, it is difficult to be applied under field conditions. In this study, the method of nature ¹³C abundance was used to partition soil respiration into root respiration, rhizomicrobial respiration and basal micro-organism respiration in a Robinia pseudoacacia plantation in the Yellow River Xiaolangdi Ecology Research Station. The difficulties of separating root respiration and rhizomicrobial respiration by ¹³C natural abundance in the plantation have been solved in this study, which include: 1) the error caused by damage and disturbance, 2)ruling out δ¹³C difference caused by C3 and C4 photosynthetic pathways between soil and plant, and 3) the problem of soil CO² diffusion fractionation. The δ¹³C value of the soil ranged from - 19‰to - 23‰. It is suggested that carbon isotopic composition of soil organic matters in the deeper soil requires a long time to cycle so that the influence of returning maize cropland to plantation on soil carbon isotope would not vanish completely.The δ¹³C values of soil organic matters did not change significantly with soil depth, while the δ¹³C values of rootless soil organic matters had a significantly positive correlation with soil depth. Theδ¹³C fractionation of CO2 diffusion in the soil was about 2.0‰, suggesting that the root respiration and rhizomicrobial respiration of the R. pseudoacacia plantation has been successfully separated by ¹³C natural abundance in this study. The results showed that the proportions of root respiration ( f_R ) and rhizomicrobial respiration (f_M ) were about 43% and 57% in July, 52% and 48% in August,and 27% and 73% in September, respectively. f_R and f_M were influenced by soil temperature and their standard deviation (SD) was higher under a lower soil conductivity. The method of ¹³C natural abundance is proved to be a suitable approach for partitioning plantation soil respiration into root respiration, rhizomicrobial respiration and basal microorganism respiration.