【Objective】 Soil carbon pool plays an important role in the process of global change. In eroded red soil, restoration of vegetation may enhance soil carbon sequestration, which is of great significance to retardation of global change. But how it does still remains unclear. Soil respiration is an important link between the soil and the atmosphere in CO₂ exchange. To a certain extent, the flux of soil carbon emission determines whether the soil is a sink or a source of carbon in the ecosystem. It is, therefore, essential to study impacts of vegetation restoration on soil respiration and its temperature sensitivity (Q10) for better understanding of the mechanism of soil carbon sequestration in severely eroded red soil. 【Method】In this study, two Pinus massoniana plantations, 13 years old (Y13) and 31 years old (Y31), in Hetian Town, Fujian Province, were selected for comparison with a tract of virgin land (Y0) nearby. Soil respiration in the three tracts of land were monitored monthly with a LI–8100 (Nebraska, USA) from April 2015 to March 2016, and soil temperature (in the 0~5 cm soil layer), soil water content (in the 0~12 cm soil layer), litter biomass, soil organic carbon, total nitrogen, C/N and soil microbial biomass carbon were also determined simultaneously. Besides, a structural equation model was developed to analyze relationships of soil respiration and its temperature sensitivity with soil and its environment factors so as to identify potential driving factors affecting soil respiration and its temperature sensitivity.【Result】 The highest peaks of soil respiration rate appeared during the period from June to August, while the valleys did from December to February, Soil respiration varied in the range of 0.89~1.44 μmol•m^-2•s^-1 in Y0, 2.00~3.85 μmol•m^-2•s^-1 in Y13 and 1.78~4.16 μmol•m^-2•s^-1 in Y31. Obviously it did not vary much seasonally in Y0 (P>0.05), but did in Y13 and Y31 (P<0.05). Soil respiration was significantly higher in Y13 and Y31 than in Y0 (P<0.05), but did not differ much between Y13 and Y31, and was much more sensitive to temperature in Y13 and Y31 than in Y0 (P<0.05), with Q10 being 1.66, 1.58 and 1.27 respectively. On a seasonal scale, no apparent relationship was observed between soil respiration rate and soil water content, but a positive one was between soil respiration and soil temperature in the surface layer (5 cm), with soil temperature explaining 25.3% of the variation of soil respiration rate in Y0, 66.5% in Y13 and 48.8% in Y31; Analysis of the affecting factors with the structure equation model demonstrate that soil respiration and its temperature sensitivity are dominantly affected by litter biomass and soil microbes.【Conclusion】All the findings in this study demostrate that ecological restoration significantly increases soil respiration, with increased litter input and henced enhanced soil biochemical processes being the dominant factors. It is, therefore, expected that they may serve as reference for the further study on rules of the variation of soil respiration and machanisms of the factors affecting ecological restoration in degraded ecosystems.