Monitoring land use and landscape changes caused by migrant resettlement with remote sensing in Region of Three Gorges of Yangtze River

China Three Gorges Water Conservancy Project has imposed a profound impact on the change of land use and landscape patterns after the successful dam in 1997. This paper uses remote sensing techniques to detect land use dynamics and adopts a landscape approach to quantify changes in landscape patterns for two counties which have larger amount of migrants. The results show that 22.9% total region had been changed in one and half a year. Development changed most obviously during this phase; it increased by 4800.8 hm², about 626.6%. Arable land in this phase decreased by 18567.9 hm², about 27.6%. All these land use changes affected landscape patterns. Patch density increased relatively about 29.5% and contiguity index decreased by 13.9% at landscape level, reflecting landscape more fragmented. The landscape shapes index increased by 17.7% at landscape level, showing the shapes of landscape are more irregular. Particularly, the most remarkable landscape pattern changes occurred on development, orchard, grassland and arable land. The land use change, is not in the good order management, but quite different from the migrant resettlement plan. It is very important to control the scope and the expanding speed of development, afforest and regrass the area where is not suitable for agriculture development in the future.