Abstract: On the basis of the shallow-water normal mode combined with ray-mode analogies, the expression of reverberation vertical correlation is derived. Both of the theory and experiment data show:reverberation vertical correlation is independent on source depth, but dependent on receiver depth. A method of inversion for bottom reflection loss and bottom scattering strength is put forward. Reverberation intensity and vertical cross-correlation coefficients of reverberation are used in the inversion. The numerical and the experimental results show that the speed of inversion is fast and the inversion results are stable.