Abstract: Red soil paddy fields in southern China are under stress from both acidification and cadmium (Cd) contamination. The use of microalgae to remediate Cd-contaminated acidic soils has received extensive attention because they can simultaneously increase soil pH and adsorb Cd. In this study, an acid- and Cd-tolerant microalgae was screened from acidic rice soils in southern China and identified as Parachlorella sp. ZJ1 by morphological observation, 18S rRNA gene sequencing and phylogenetic tree analysis. The lowest pH and the highest Cd concentration that ZJ1 could tolerate were 3.50 and 6.00 mg/L, respectively. The experimental results showed that the Cd adsorption capacity of ZJ1 strain was 67.36%, 64.89% and 41.03% under the conditions of pH=6.00 and initial Cd concentrations of 1.50, 3.00 and 5.00 mg/L, respectively. The fitting results of adsorption kinetics showed that the adsorption of Cd by ZJ1 was consistent with the second-order kinetic model and Langmuir model, which belonged to chemisorption and monolayer adsorption. When the pH=4.00 and the initial Cd concentration was 3.00 mg/L, the adsorption rate of Cd by algae strain ZJ1 was about 56.81%, and the pH value of the system could be raised to about 6.50, which indicated that ZJ1 had the ability to adsorb Cd in acidic environment and improve the pH value of the system. The acquisition of the algal strain ZJ1 can provide a strain resource and theoretical basis for the remediation of acidic Cd-contaminated soils.