Abstract: Landuse and land cover change is an important factor to regional ecological environmental evolvement. Construction and utilization of hydraulic project of northwest Junggar basin have resulted in a great change of landuse in the project impacted regions since 2000.Using the landsat TM satellite images of 2000 and 2002, the paper analyzes the present situation and dynamic change of landuse changes in the directly impacted regions of project by using the RS and GIS techniques. And the paper also discussed the drive forces of the landuse changes of research areas. The results shows that desert land, which occupied 74.45% of the whole area, are the main types of landuse in research regions. And the areas of grassland, cultivated land, woodland, water area and constructed land are relatively small, which occupied 18.39%, 2.47%, 2.08%, 2.12% and 0.49% of the area respectively. The characteristic of landuse of the regions reflects the execrable nature environment. Through the study, the paper also shows that the areas of cultivated land increases and desert land decrease greatly and the areas of water area, grassland and constructed land have a certainty increase, but the areas of woodland has a small decrease. These changes of landuse were mainly caused by social and economic factors. Combining with the results of investigation and the verification on the spot, the article also points out the ecological environmental problems resulted by landuse changes in the impacted regions of hydraulic project, and some suggestion to protect ecological environment are put forward.

Key words: northwest Junggar Basin, hydraulic project, landuse changes, RS/GIS