Abstract: Soil available water-holding capacity (AWC) is a key index for soil productivity assessment and plays an important role in agricultural production, while AWC values of different soil types were not available in current soil database. The author took black soil as an example, measured AWC of different positions, analyzed the characteristics of spatial distribution of AWC and built the empirical model of AWC related to soil physicochemical properties. The results showed that: (1) the AWC of the research area varied from 10.62% to 30.98%, with an average value of 20.06%, and AWC in the middle slope was significantly lower than that in other landform positions; (2) there was a negative correlation between AWC and sand content, whereas there was an significantly positive correlation between AWC and soil bulk density, powder (sand) content, clay content and organic matter content, and AWC and soil bulk density had the most significant correlation; (3) the inspection results of 2 pedotransfer functions for estimating AWC based on mathematical statistics analysis showed that there was no significant difference between measured AWC and calculated AWC. This study could provide an AWC estimation equation for black soil and a reference method for AWC estimation of other soil types.