Abstract: Fault basin is the primary type of basins in Yunnan Province.It is socially and economically significant to study the occurrence and reasonably utilized the resource of the karstic water in the fault basins.By strudy on typical fault basins,four occurrence types of shallow circulated karstic water are recognized,i.e.exposed type,exposed-covered type,exposed-buried type and stagnant type.In the area of exposed type of karst,cavity systems are unevenly distributed with fast pipeline flow.In the covered type area,the water-bearing strata are equal to porous media,of which the layered structure varies vertically.Most of them are the slow and spread flow.The groundwater discharges by way of underground river or heavy spring at the edge of basin valley.The stagnant type belongs to exposed karstic water in resisting condition with scattered and limited water,which is suitable to solve the problem of water shortage in mountainous distrcts.For the fault basins in different tectonic areas in Yunnan Province,the karstic water should be developed in corresponding rational ways.