In this research, the Xiangjiang River areas from the Shifeng bridge to the Majiahe bridge were selected as study areas to assess the ecological risk and release amount of heavy metals in the surface sediments of the Xiangjiang River, Hunan Province, China. A sum of five surface sediment samples were collected, then the total contents and the specific chemical forms of Cu、Pb、Zn、Cd、Cr、Mn、As and Hg in these samples were measured by the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and atom absorption spectrophotometer (AAS). Results showed that the average contents of Cd and As in sediments were higher than the standard of class Ⅲ of National Soil Environmental Quality Standard (GB15618-1995). Moreover, the Hakanson ecological risk index was adopted to assess the potential ecological risk of heavy metals in the surface sediments. The results showed that the comprehensive indexes of potential ecological risks (RI) for four sediment samples were higher then 600, suggesting that the Xiangjiang River has been suffered high ecological hazards. Finally, continuous experiments were carried out to study the effect of flow rate and initial pH values on the heavy metals release from sediments. The results showed that the increased flow rate and the decreased initial pH could promote the release of heavy metals in sediments, while the release amount of four heavy metals were too small and the largest release amount of Mn was 7.50μg/(g·d). It suggested that the release of heavy metals in the sediments into the water environment was a slow and long-term process.