Abstract: To explore the effects of sampling extent and spacing on spatial variability of soil moisture in a gravel-sand mulched jujube orchard, spatial analyses including classical statistics and geo-statistics were conducted with soil water content (SWC) of 0-50 cm in the 32 m×32 m field by changing the sampling extent and spacing. Irrespective of sampling extents (i.e. 32 m×32 m, 28 m×28 m, 24 m×24 m, 20 m×20 m and 16 m×16 m), the SWC decreased with the increase of soil depth while the variation coefficient increased with the increasing soil depth. The spatial variability of SWC was weak and moderate for all scales; The variation coefficient (Cv), nugget (C0), and variation range (A) of SWC all increased with the increase of sampling extent. When three sampling spacings (i.e. 4, 8 and 12 m) were concerned, the nugget (C0) increased with the increase of sampling spacing; The variation range (A) decreased with the increase of sampling spacing; the Cv was not affected by the sampling spacing. A strong spatial autocorrelation characteristic of SWC was found for all scales. The distribution patterns of SWC in the same soil layer at different sampling spacings were similar and tended to be "flat" with the increase of the sampling spacing. The reasonable sampling spacing was found to be 8 m in our case.