[Objective] The paper aims to simulate the cultivated land evolution in Songshan District of Chifeng City

Inner Mongolia and provide scientific basis for the reasonable land use planning and management

ecological restoration and economic policy making. [Methods] The 1990

2000 and 2010 TM remote sensing data was used to analyze the characteristic of cultivated land evolution in the study area. Using multi-criteria evaluation(MCE) method in GIS CA-Markov model

we simulated the spatial pattern of cultivated land in 2020. [Results] The cultivated land evolution showed significant spatial differences. (1) Due to the rapid urbanization in suburb

a large area of cultivated land has been converted into constructed land; (2) In rocky mountains of the west of Songshan District

more and more cultivated land have been abandoned due to serious soil erosion and poor soil resulted from higher elevation and steep slope

at the same time

the implementation of the policy of returning cultivated land to forest also led to the shrinking of cultivated land.(3) Altitude was relatively low and the terrain was flat in loess hilly region of eastern Songshan District

which was suitable for arable land. The increasing of cultivated land was mainly from the unused land and grassland.(4) In 2020

the simulated land use pattern of the study area showed that the fragmentation of cultivated land will be moderated

large-scale development will start. At the same time

the stability of cultivated land spatial pattern was increasing. [Conclusion] The precision of the model simulation results is high and provides support for cultivated land use planning and policy-making. At the same time

the results lay a foundation for the optimal allocation of land resources.