Abstract: Scientific research needs to grasp the trends and priority areas. Main factors affect the development of physical geography include the needs of society, the subject's own nature and the impact of other disciplines. At present the development of physical geography has shown such situations as participating actively in a multidisciplinary research project, the emergence of new thinking and new areas, models as important means of research, the interpretation of spatial pattern based on the understanding of mechanism of natural evolution, and wider application of the research outcomes. In the future, physical geography will be more integrated, and researches on the height of global change reveal more in-depth process and its mechanism of dynamic changes, increase use of high-tech to arm its self, and serve more closely for regional sustainable development. The future priority areas of physical geography in China are: human activities impact on and adaptation to the global change, the process of land change and its eco-environmental effects and control, the process of urbanization and its environmental-resources effects and control, surface process and integrated management of river basin, the evolutionary process of soil and its impact on soil quality, sustainability of resources and ecology, the regional environmental process, health risks and control of pollutants, formation mechanism and the comprehensive risk management of disaster, and integrated assessment of ecosystem services. The comprehensive study on special natural geographical regions should be strengthened, including theoretical study on regional integration, the response of modern surface processes in cold regions to climate change, the process of drought and the evolution of man-land relationship, wetland ecological processes and their service function and recovery model, aeolian environment and aeolian processes and their regulation, evolutionary process and sustainability of Karst ecosystems, ecological barrier role and regional ecological security of Tibet Plateau, and interactions between mountain hazards and environment and mountain ecological security.