In this study,the effects of crop residue turnover on the composition and stability of soil water-stable agglomeration and the distribution of soil organic carbon in aggregates were investigated for giving a reference to crop production and crop residue turnover in the semiarid areas in northeast China. A field experiment including rotary tillage and plough tillage with/without crop residue incorporation treatments (RT,CK1,PT and CK2) was started in 2015. The purposes of this study were to explore the effects of tillage and straw management practices on the ratio of soil aggregates with various sizes,stability of soil waterstable agglomeration,distribution of soil organic carbon (SOC) in 2017 and maize yield from 2015 to 2017. Our results indicated that the residue incorporation could be used to significantly increase the SOC content by 13.90% (RT) and 9.29% (PT),respectively,in 0-10 cm soil layer compared with those without residue incorporation(P<0.05).Compared with PT,the content of water-stable aggregates (>2 mm) and average weight diameter of aggregates (MWD) were significantly increased by 22.05% and 7.78%,respectively,while the content of water-stable aggregates (<0.053 mm) was significantly decreased by 16.81% by RT management (P<0.05).In addition,RT significantly enhanced the SOC of water-stable aggregates in topsoil,and the most improvement was found in the water-stable aggregates>2 mm (P<0.05). There was no significant difference in maize yield in 2016 and 2017. Compared with the yield in 2016,the yield reduction from RT and PT treatments (8.57%-9.72%) was lower than that from CK1 and CK2 (10.84%-12.13%) in 2017. Therefore,the rotary tillage with residue returning practice in dryland farming is recommended with benefits of promoting soil water-stable aggregate formation and increasing SOC content so that give a stable yield for maize production regardless of precipitation variation in northeast China.