The Yellow River Delta(YRD) extends continually into the sea with the high sedi,ment contents of the Yellow River(YR).The land use/land cover in YRD changes rapidly.With remote sensing data,the information of land use/land cover can be acquired more conveniently and economically.In this paper,a scheme of images process for YRD was proposed and the land uses of YRD in 1984,1986,1991,1996 and 2001 were extracted from multi,temporal remote sen,sing data.The spatial pattern of land use and its change characters from 1984 when Dongying city was founded are analyzed. YRD is divided into four regions,which are the Current YRD plain(region I),the Modern YRD plain(region Ⅱ),the YR alluvial plain(region Ⅲ) and the YR alluvial,diluvial plain of pre,mount of the Central Mountains(region Ⅳ).The spatial distribution of land use and land cover in the four regions is different.Inland water like reservoirs and aquacultures mainly lies in regions I and Ⅱ,arable land mainly in regions Ⅱ and Ⅲ,residential area mainly in regions Ⅲ and Ⅱ,vegetation area and tidal flat mainly in region I,and waste land mainly in region Ⅱ. In region I,the land use/land cover types became more various.In 1984,the main land use/land cover types were arable land,tidal flat and vegetation area,while in 2001,the main types became arable land,tidal flat,waste land,vegetation area and inland water.The area proportion of each land use and land cover was very close.Annual land use and land cover changed rapidly in region I.In region Ⅱ,the main land use and land cover types are waste land and arable land.From 1984 to 2001,the area of arable land decreased,while the area of inland water increased.The area of waste land changed little.Land use/land cover changed most rapidly. In region Ⅲ,about two third of the land are arable land,which are much larger than other land use/land cover types.From 1984 to 2001,the waste land stepped down,while the residential area and inland waters stepped up,especially the residential area increased more rapidly.The velocity of land use/land cover change was moderate.In region Ⅳ,the land use and land cover types are very simple.The main land use/land cover type was arable land.The area of arable land and residential area accupied about 95%.From 1984 to 2001,the area of arable land decreased because of residential area extension.The land use/land cover was most stable and changed slowly.