In order to explore the effect of different habitats on the species diversity and modular biomass of riparian herbaceous vegetation, we conducted an investigation using the typical sampling method in the Wenjiang section of the Jinma River, Sichuan.Thestudy site was divided into five habitat types, i.e., the flood land (seldom disturbed by sand mining but by some other human activities), the gravel land(formed with the change of water level after sand mining), the reed land(formed by the rolling of vehicles and covered with reeds later), the S.arundinaceum land(the high ground not affected by the water level and covered with S.arundinaceum later),the sand land (formed after sand mining). The results suggested that: 1) a total of 113 herbaceou species belonging to 32 families and 80 genera, was recorded across all types of habitats, among which the number of herbaceous species was the highest (i.e., a high species richness) in the sand habitats, with a total of 59 species belonging to 21 families and 46 genera, while the numbers of plants belonging to the families of Gramineae and Compositae were similar in all the types of habitats; 2) the species diversity index and evenness index were relatively small in the S. arundinaceum and reed lands, while the dominance index is relatively large compared with other habitats, indicating a extremely uneven species distribution, weak concentration ratio and uniformity, and extremely unstable species community; 3) The modular biomass was the lowest in the flood land, and the highest in the S.arundinaceum land, with significant difference in the root and stem dry weight than that in the other habitats; 4) compared with the other habitats, the species diversity in the sand land is relatively high, and the species distributes evenly with high modular biomass, indicating that the sand land is suitable for the growth of riparian herbaceous plants.