There has been a great concern about how to accurately predict soil properties using the limited soil samples.In order to explore the prediction method with higher precision in large scale using the limited soil samples,130 soil sampling sites were collected in Hainan island,three methods,iemultiple linear regression(MLR),ordinary kriging(OK)and regression kriging(RK),were used to predict spatial distribution of soil total nitrogen(TN),and 29 sampling sites were validated to compare the prediction accuracy of these three methods.The results showed that:1)the root mean square error of each soil layer with the three methods was OK> RK> MLR;2)the prediction distribution tendency of soil TN by the three methods was similar,iethe soil TN content was decreased gradually from east to west in Hainan island;3)soil TN content of 0~5 cm layer was very significantly correlated with farmland use types,that of 0~20 cm layer was significantly correlated with normalization difference vegetation index,and those of 20~40 cm and 40~60 cm soil layers were very significantly or significantly correlated with normalization difference vegetation index and slope.