Abstract: With the assistance of remote sensing and geographic information systems, the land resource databases in 1986 and 2000 have been established through interpreting the Landsat TM images of the two times, and the extent of the databases includes the contiguous region of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia in the northern China. According to the informat ion of forest and grass cover derived from the databases, the following points can be concluded: in the whole region, there was 3321860 ha of forestland and grassland in 2000, occupying 56.87% of the total area, the forestland occupied 13.72% of them, and grassland occupied 86.28%. Although the forest and grass cover had increased by 22829 ha from 1986 to 2000, accouting for 0.69% of its total area, the func tion of protect ion and regulation of forest and grass cover had decreased and the size, acreage and shape complexity of their patches also declined. At the same time, only the low cover grassland had increased among all types of forestland and grassland. The decreasing factors of vegetation cover change were mainly deforestat ion, reclamation of grassland, and desertification of grassland, and the increasing factors were the completion of eco environment construction projects, such as afforestation, returning farmland back into forestland or grassland and so on.