Evaluating human effects on the ecosystem is a critical issue in the process of general land use planning.In recent years,Ecological Footprint(EF)has been an widely accepted tool to quantify this kind of assessment in many fields.However,only few studies have addressed the problem of EF in the realm of land use general planning.Taking Langfang city as a case study,this paper develops an approach to quantitatively analyze the trends of EF and BC over the planning period in general land use planning and to evaluate the ecological effects of the land use general planning. In this paper,we introduced the concepts of change rates and scissors difference to indicate the tendencies of EF and BC time series.We calculated the change rates and scissors difference of per capita EF and BC over planning period of general land use planning(1997-2010),investigated the developing process during the past eight years(1997-2004),and predicted the future tendency in the following six years(2005-2010).Based on these,we assessed the possible effects of general land use planning(1997-2010) on the local ecosystem,and attempt to present suggestions for the following general land use planning(2005-2020). The results show that: 1)In Langfang city,trends of the per capita EF and BC are on the way round,and the ecological deficit enhanced from 1997 to 2010.The per capita EF increased from 1.583 ha in 1997 to 2.823 ha in 2010,while the per capita BC decreased over years from 0.563 ha in 1997 to 0.414 ha in 2010.Meanwhile,the ecological deficit in 2010 will be 2.619 times greater than that of in 1997.2)In Langfang city,the scissors difference between the trends of EF and BC time series had been decreasing until 2000,it began to rise after year 2000.This growth direction is not what we expected,with the aspect of ecological equilibrium.3)The general land use planning(1997-2010)of Langfang city had produced some positive effects on the local ecosystem.Thus,the ecological deficit at 2000 was lower than the expected,and the ecological difference had also been reduced during 1997-2004.But the expected biological capacity at 2010 can hardly be realized following this trend.The direction of reducing the ecological deficit by extensive land use is against the sustainable development.The general planning(2005-2020) of Langfang city should pay more emphasis on the land use spatial layout not rather than on the land use quantities layout and strengthen scientific,economical,intensive land use.