The invention discloses a high-rockfill-dam transient-rheological-parameter inversion method based on the response surface method.The method includes the steps that a rockfill-dam three-dimensional finite element model is built in combination with dam body material sections and construction grading conditions, the sensitivity of the transient parameters and the rheological parameters of rockfill of the material sections is analyzed, and the transient parameters with the high sensitivity and the rheological parameters with the high sensitivity are selected as to-be-inversed parameters jointly; a material static force model is a Duncan EB model, and a rheological model is a Nanjing-Hydraulic-Research-Institute five-parameter model; the implicit relationship between the finite-element-calculated settling volume and the calculation parameters is represented through a specific-form response surface function, undetermined coefficients of a response surface equation set are solved through several times of finite element calculation, and therefore the nonlinear mapping relationship between the settling volume and the calculation parameters is built.On the bases of the response surface equation, the objective function aims at obtaining the minimum root-mean-square error between the calculated settling volume and the practically-measured settling volume, the transient parameters and the rheological parameters are inversed with the genetic algorithm at the same time, and the obtained set of optimal calculation parameters are the inversion result.