[Objective] The characteristics

driving forces and existing problems in urban land expansion of Akesu City

Xijang Wei Autonomous Region are discussed

which provides a basis for the development and construction of this Oasis City.[Methods] With the Landsat TM/ETM+ satellite remote sensing images in 1990

2000

2010 and 2015 as data sources and using ENVI supervised classification

we extracted data on urban land

arable land

forest land

water body

unused land and other land used for four periods in Akesu City. We then analyzed the changes in urban land in Aksu by the index of expansion strength

velocity

center of gravity coordinate transfer

compact degree and elastic coefficient.[Results] In 1990

the area of urban land was 18.34 km2

and the total area of urban land in 2015 was 91.61 km2. The expanded area in 25 years was 73.24 km2

and the net increase was four times of that in 1990. The expaned urban land was mainly from unused land and arable land

with an area of 43.84 km2 and 28.04 km2 respectively; The barycentric coordinates of urban land moved to EN

SW and SW

similar to traffic route change. From 1990 to 2000

the barycentric coordinates moved with a distance of 243.7 m. Yet they moved 832.2 m from 2000 to 2010

and 1 568.2 m from 2010 to 2015. The urban land expanded with a planar and ribbon shape

and the density of the perimeter of the urban land has been declining from 0.201 in 1990 to 0.066 in 2015

and the urban space was increasingly complex.[Conclusion] The urban land of Aksu City expanded continuously and rapidly from 1990 to 2015. The urban land expansion rate during the study period was higher than the rate of population growth

with an expanding gap between them. The elastic coefficient was 2.3 in 1990 to 2000 and 10.13 in 2010 to 2015

so the urban expansion and population growth were not reasonable. The non-agricultural population

economic development

policy

and traffic factors in Aksu City are the main driving forces of land use change.