Abstract: As important parts of land surface heat balance, surface fluxes of water and heat (sensible heat fluxes and latent heat fluxes) are crucial research subjects in meteorology, agriculture, hydrology and ecology.The large aperture scintillometer (LAS) developed at the end of the 20th century can obtain the average water and heat fluxes over complex surfaces.After introducing the principle of LAS, this paper reviewed the research progress of LAS in three aspects:the usability, the related problems in observation, and the practical application, so as to provide help for the further research of LAS.