Abstract: The study on the development and utilization of land resources in Central Asia is instability, for the reason that the information is limited. Then, it is difficult to meet the relevant systemic research to fit the need about the socioeconomic sustainable development of the Asia-Europe inland arid regions. Therefore, in this paper, the 2005’s global land cover dataset materials of ESA and the statistical data of FAO are used to study the development, utilization and the change tendency of the land resource in Central Asia during 1992-2009. The results indicate as follows: (1) The area of the farmland and the crop productivity decrease rapidly, and then increase slowly. The area of the farmland decreases from 43.1×10⁴ km² (10.9%) in 1992 to 29.8×10⁴ km² (7.58%) in 2000, and then increases to 31.6×10⁴ km² (8.04%) in 2009 which is still far from the farmland area in 1992. Because of the breakup of the Soviet Union, a series of problem including the shortage of means of production, the destruction of the agricultural infrastructure and the market economy is still not established which had been caused the waste of land. After that, the independent of the states in Central Asia leads the recovery of the social economy and the area of farmland. (2) The areas of forest and grassland in Central Asia are varied little. However, the grassland grazing capacity has changed in large degree. In details: the grazing capacity of Kazakhstan has been decreased continually with the number 6.25×10⁷ sheep in 2009 that is only accounts to 63.1% of the 9.91×10⁷ sheep in 1992; on the contrary, the grazing capacity of Turkmenistan has been increasing from 1.04×107 sheep in 1992 to 2.96×107 sheep in 2009 that is triple of 1.04×10⁷ sheep in 1992; the grazing capacity of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan increases at different degree, respectively. The privatization of pasture in the most of Central Asia and the damage of seasonal pasture contribute to the change of the grassland grazing capacity. (3) The potential productivity of the land resource is great in Central Asia. However, ecological problems such as soil erosion and soilsalinization of the farmland and pasture overgrazing, have been discovered in this area. In addition, the reasonable application of water resources in Central Asia has great important ecological significance and economic value, especially in the arid land. But, as well know, the water resources are shortage and the distribution is not reasonable, and there are still some problems in the application of the water resources, such as, the waste of water, the pollution of water. As a result, there is a great problem for the countries in Central Asia that is how to solve and control the above issues efficiently has great effects on the sustainable development of the land resource and the protection of the ecology in Central Asia.

Key words: Central Asia, land resource, land use, change tendency.