A field experiment that combined iodidestarch staining with conservative ions as water flow tracers were conducted to investigate the heterogeneity of water flow and solute transport. The active region model (ARM) was applied to characterize heterogeneous water flow and solute transport in soilsHeterogeneous flow patterns were visualized from the iodidestarch staining and distributions of Br^-, Cl^-and NO₃ ^-racers. The ARM described the fractal characteristics of the heterogeneous water flow. A relationship between the proportion of active region within the whole region and the effective saturation of soil water was established with a power function, in which the power was related to the fractal dimension. Results indicated that simulations of water flow and solute transport using the ARM matched the measured data better than those using the continuum model. The results also showed that the concentration distributions of the ion tracers were normal or lognormal distributions and the dispersion degree of solute concentrations decreased with soil depth. Based on the analyses, it was concluded that the ARM was useful to characterize the macroscopic features of heterogeneous water flow and solute transport in soils.