Abstract: As a good carrier of paleoclimate and paleoenvironment, lake sediments could be a reflector of the evolution history of climate, vegetation and human activities. Moreover, fossil pigment is an important proxy of lake sediments,and they supply useful information for the estimation of regional primary productivity and reconstruction of regional environment. In this paper we introduce and summarize some important progress made in lake sedimets, especially the study of the preservation in lake sediments, reconstruction of paleovegetation, paleotemperature and climatic changes of the original region and so on. The authors also discuss existing problem and evaluate the future development about studying fossil pigments. With the development of analytical technique, sediment pigments will be used as a powerful tool that can favor reconstruction of paleoenvironment and paleotemperature.