Abstract: The railway construction,owing to setting up the construction sites such as taking and discarding soil,sand and stone material fields and construction campsites,will certainly give rise to the strong visual impact on the landscape along the railway if the construction sites design irrationally.This paper refers to the visual management system(VMS)of the US Forest Service and the visual resources management (VRM)of the US Land Management Bureau.Using the techniques of RS and GIS in combination with the landscape characteristics along the Qinghai - Tibet railway,according to the location,area,relative slope and distance from viewer,the length of the construction sites along the railway and the adjacent landscape type of construction sites,visual management system of Qinghai - Tibet railway is analyzed and built and the visual impact of the construction sites were evaluated.On the basis of the above analysis,some suggestions were put forward so as to amend and redesign the construction sites.

Key words: Qinghai - Tibet railway, Visual Management System(VMS), Visual Absorption Capa-bility(VAC), Remote Sensing(RS), Geographic Information System(GIS)