Rainfall redistribution by vegetation and associated dissolved nutrient fluxes are critical for water and nutrient cycling in plant-soil system. Shrubs are the dominant vegetation type and show contrasting morphological characteristics in drylands, self-organized being clumped with aggregated canopy or scattered with isolated canopy. However, little is known about the effects of shrub self-organization on rainfall redistribution and dissolved carbon and nitrogen fluxes (DC, DN), which further affects soil moisture recharge and soil nutrient accumulation to resist drought. In this study, we compared water fluxes (including throughfall, stemflow, infiltration, surface runoff, and top-soil moisture) and their DC and DN fluxes between the clumped and scattered shrubs of Salix psammophila on the Loess Plateau in China from 2019 to 2021. The scattered shrubs had a significantly higher throughfall percentage (77.6 % vs. 72.5 %), but a lower stemflow percentage (5.4 % vs. 7.9 %) and surface runoff percentage (0.10 % vs. 0.37 %) compared to clumped shrubs. Moreover, clumped shrubs demonstrated significantly higher DC flux in stemflow, yet lower fluxes in runoff compared to scattered shrubs (p < 0.05), while no significant difference of fluxes in throughfall and infiltration was observed. The clumped shrubs had significantly higher plant-derived DC and DN fluxes than those in scattered pattern (p < 0.05), whereas there was no significant difference of soil-buffered fluxes between the two patterns. Thus, scattered shrubs collected more net rainfall resulting in higher surface soil moisture, whereas clumped shrubs received greater amount of nutrient inputs leading to increase of soil nutrient content in surface layer. This study reveals the contrasting patterns of self-organized shrubs to harvest rainfall and dissolved nutrient, which provides a new understanding on the survival strategies of xerophytic shrubs from morphological adaptations in drylands.