Land use/cover changes(LUCC) have been regarded as a research hotspot in the field of global environment change． Quantitative evaluation on land use change is of great significance for sustainable utilization of local land resources． The Ebinur Lake watershed in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region，as the study area，is a typical area of arid regions． Based on the LUCC data in 1970 and 2009，we used mathematical models and ArcGIS to analyze the change in land use/cover during this time period． The results show that the areas of cropland and construction land increased constantly from 1970 to 2007，with average annual rate of 5． 21% and 5． 62%，respectively． Accordingly，the areas of the other land use types decreased． The transformation between cropland and grassland，and between unused land and grassland were significant． The area of construction land experienced maximum changes and the water area minimum． Specifically，unused land，grassland，and cropland received most conversion areas from the other land use types，and unused land and grassland contributed most areas to the other types．