Abstract: Under the effect of intense exploitation of groundwater, the multi-layer soil of clayey soil and sandy soil is susceptible to be compressed, which causes the land subsidence disaster. To better understand the mechanism of land subsidence caused by groundwater withdrawal, a small-scale sand-clay interbred model box is built to carry out the consolidation and rebound tests. Distributed fiber optical sensing(DFOS)technologies are introduced for coupling monitoring of soil strain and water content to analyze the response characteristics of each layer to water level changes. The results indicate that soil layers are compressed during drainage while rebound during recharge. In addition, the deformation of clay layer is obvious than that of sand layer. The deformation of sand layer is synchronous with water content changes, while that of clay layer is slightly lagging behind the water content changes due to its lower coefficient of permeability. The segmented compression curve of clay layer shows that water content rapidly decreases when it is lower than its liquid limit, meanwhile the clay layer compression rate obviously accelerates during drainage. When water content is higher than that of its liquid limit during recharge, rebound rate significantly increases. The test results are of great significance to study the mechanism of land subsidence as well as to evaluate the compression potential of soil layers.