Abstract: The shaking table tests on the shallow overburden slope protected by shrub vegetation were carried out to reveal the influence of the anchoring effect of plant roots on the seismic response of shallow overburden slope where an unprotected shallow overburden slope was taken as control group.A systematic study was conducted on the seismic response characteristics and the seismic energy transfer laws of two types of slopes from the perspectives of time domain and time-frequency domain,respectively.The results show that plant roots can significantly reduce the acceleration amplification coefficient and peak acceleration ratio in the upper and middle parts of the overburden layer,which demonstrates an obvious slope protection effect.The inhibitory effect of plant roots on the acceleration amplification is not obvious in the middle and lower parts of the overburden layer.The bare slope exhibits a “magnitude saturation effect” of acceleration amplification as the peak input acceleration increases,while the vegetated slope do not show this effect.The total energy time-varying curve of the overburden layer surface of vegetated slope is generally smaller than that of bare slope,and bare slope exhibits an obvious energy amplification effect of overburden layer.The difference in settlement between vegetated slope and bare slope rapidly increases when the peak input acceleration is greater than 0.3g.However,the settlement of vegetated slope is significantly smaller than that of bare slope with an average reduction rate of 65.39%.