Abstract: Abstract: The North China Plain is the major producing area for winter wheat in China. It is also amongst the global hotspots in terms of severe water scarcity. The monitoring and mapping of winter wheat in an efficient and accurate manner is of great significance for effective policy management on both agriculture and water resources in the North China Plain. Remote sensing technology has been proved to be a practical and feasible method for agricultural crop area extraction in previous researches. In this study, a multi-source remote sensing monitoring system was built, in order to quickly and accurately extract the spatial and temporal information of winter wheat in the North China Plain. Specifically, a spectral curve library for winter wheat was constructed, using MODIS EVI time-series data and two TM images in 2011; and the uniform rules were formulated for the identification of winter wheat, with the combination of phenology calendar in each province in the North China Plain. The spatial and temporal changes of areas planting with winter wheat in 2001-2011 in the North China Plain were extracted using the above uniform rules, and its patterns were analyzed at the grid level, the county level and the province level, respectively. The results showed that: 1) The classification accuracy of winter wheat extracted by the multi-source remote sensing monitoring system was good at the grid scale, and the overall accuracies were stable in 2001-2011, with the values ranging between 74.80% in 2001 and 78.14% in 2011; at the county level, area planting with winter wheat extracted by the multi-source remote sensing monitoring system in 2011 agreed well with the statistics, with the determination coefficient R2 of 0.89 and the root mean square error RMSE of 1.29×104 hm2; the error between the above two data sets was 11.31% in 2011. 2) Area planting with winter wheat in the North China Plain continued to increase in 2001-2011, and it was 156.05×104 hm2 (14.96%) more in 2011 than that in 2001; in 2001-2006, areas planting with winter wheat all increased in four provinces including Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu and Anhui, and it continued to increase in Shandong and Henan in 2006-2011, while weak reductions occurred in Jiangsu and Anhui at the same time; in comparison, areas planting with winter wheat all represented significant decline in volatility in 2001-2011 in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei. 3) There was an obvious "increase in the south and decrease in the north" pattern for spatial and temporal changes of areas planting with winter wheat in 2001-2011 across the North China Plain; the spatial expansions of winter wheat were mainly spotted in the middle and southern part of the North China Plain, including the Southwest Shandong Plain, the Jiaolai Plain, the East Henan Plain and the North Anhui Plain, while shrinkages of winter wheat were mainly found in the northern part of the North China Plain, including the plain areas of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei. The spatial pattern of changes in areas planting with winter wheat could be attributed to the spatial heterogeneity of water resources, and it was also likely to be associated with the increasing opportunity cost of agricultural labor forces, the benefit changes of winter wheat and the agricultural subsidy policy. However, the major driving forces and their driving mechanisms deserved deep analysis. This study can provide useful information for decision makings on crop planting structure adjustment, food security guarantee and water management optimization, and can also be used as a reference for large-scale and long-time monitoring of spatial and temporal information of crop planting areas with remote sensing data as the main data source.