Wuhan is located at the intersection of the Yangtze River and the Han River.The geological environment of the river and lake is the foundation of Wuhan city. Meanwhile,river flood is a major restricting factor for urban development.Flood control embankment is the most important task in Wuhan city construction.To some extent,the history of Wuhan's urban development is the history of embankment construction and the history of man-land relationship in Wuhan urban development.Based on the historical process of embankment construction in Wuhan,this paper discusses the geological environment of embankment construction and its significance to urban space expansion and urban construction.The research analysis shows three main results.First,Huarui Embankment in Wuchang is the earliest embankment in Wuhan city.It was built during the Reign of Zhenghe of the Northern Song Dynasty (1111 ~ 1118 aAD),with a history of about 900 years.Second,Wuhan was in the stage of sporadic embankment construction before Ming Dynasty,and the main purpose of embankments which had local and responsive characteristics was to protect the safety of the city walls.People build embankments only in places that were at risk at that time.The construction of embankments in the Ming Dynasty had a strong purpose and certain systematicity,especially the construction of Yuangong Embankment was the beginning of history of the development of Wuhan’s surrounding embankment.The Qing Dynasty was the great development period of Wuhan’s embankment. It was the beginning of the engineering of a relatively systematic embankment, which laid the foundation of Wuhan embankment system.The construction of a mass of surrounding embankments made Wuhan move from the development along the river and the natural levee to the new development stage of inland (turn lakes into lands).During the Republic of China,the construction of embankments in Wuhan was only partially perfected on the basis of the Qing Dynasty’s embankments.Wuhan's flood protection system was formed in the 1950s after the founding of the People's Republic of China.It has been continuously strengthened and raised since then,making it a real safety guarantee project in Wuhan.Third,the formation and development of Hankou depend entirely on the embankment.Urban expansion has gone through four stages,namely Yuangong Embankment,Hankou Fort,Jinghan Railway Dike and Zhanggong Embankment, all based on the embankment construction.Embankments are not only the premise of urban space expansion,but also the foundation of urban construction.Before the Republic of China,most of the main streets in Wuhan city were built along the embankments.It was gradually formed that making an embankment a street at ordinary times while making a street an embankment in the flood season,which is the remarkable characteristic of Wuhan's urban construction and development.With the boundaries of Yuangong Embankment and Zhanggong Embankment,the Human-land relationship of the embankment construction in Wuhan has roughly gone through three stages: the stage of " human intervents partly in nature " to maintain the survival,the stage of " human changes and shapes nature " to seek development and the stage of " human controls nature " to try for rapid development.This study can be used as a reference for urban geological survey in flood area.