An Elman recurrent neural network model(ENN) is constructed and applied to the daily runoff forecast in the Linyi sub-catchment of upper Yishu river basin in this paper.In order to further evaluate the performance of ENN,land surface hydrological model TOPX is applied as a comparison at the same time in the study region.Based on analysis indexes such as Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient,correlation coefficient,mean relative error and root mean relative square error,the results of daily runoff and flooding processes indicated that ENN presents high accuracy in hydrological simulations on the rainfall-runoff dynamic process,the peak flow and peak occurrence time.It is feasible to take it as a promising and efficient method to simulate the daily runoff.