The black soil region of Northeast China is an important commodity grain production base of our country. Intensive soil and water loss declines both the thickness and quality of the black soil, thereby threatening the national food security directly. It is therefore of great importance to systematically examine soil erosion research outcomes in the black soil region, which hold essential implications for the prevention and alleviation of black soil degradation, the maintenance of land productivity, and the assurance of national food security. In the current study, the researches on soil erosion environment and its effects, soil erosion processes and mechanisms, spatio-temporal variability of soil erosion in the black soil region were analyzed and concluded, and future research perspectives on soil erosion were proposed. The erosion environment of the black soil region is characterized by various erosive agents and their different combinations, as well as long gentle slopes. The direct impacts of such erosion environment are declining black soil thickness and soil quality degradation of slope farmlands. The erosion mechanisms and dominant influencing factors vary with erosion type, which include interrill, rill, ephemeral gully, gully and freeze-thaw erosion. The feedback of sediment transport induced by energy consumption to soil detachment is the dominant reason for the alternative pattern of strong and weak soil erosion intensity with slope length. Ephemeral gully and gully mainly emerge on slope farmlands, and soil erosion intensity is significantly affected by anthropogenic activities. Although notably weaker than water erosion, the freeze-thaw erosion in this region can influence water erosion via reducing soil erosion resistance and enhancing both surface and subsurface runoff. At the catchment scale, the type and intensity of soil erosion apparently change vertically along the slope, i.e., from slope summit towards toe, whereas at the regional scale, they exhibit clear latitudinal and longitudinal zonality along the north-east and west-east directions, respectively. Global climate change may enhance water erosion but reduce freeze-thaw erosion in the black soil region. Future research should focus on the response mechanisms of black soil thickness and land productivity to soil erosion, the dynamic processes and coupling mechanisms of complex soil erosion, as well as the spatio-temporal variability and controlling factors of typical soil erosion types.