Abstract: Taken Akesu river basin in Xinjiang Province as the study area, remote sensing and GIS technologies were used to reconstruct the Landsat TM/ETM/OLI remote sensing images in 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014. The changes of cultivated land in Akesu river basin during the past 16 years were analyzed from the dynamic changes of cultivated land area, barycentric migraton of the cultivated land, landscape pattern change of cultivated land, etc., respectively. And the influence of population growth, socieconomic growth, and water conservancy construction on cultivated land change was also analyzed. The results showed that the cultivated land area continued to increase, and the increased area in different regions varied, the lower reaches increased most, then was the upper reaches, the middle reaches increased the least. The focus of the cultivated land of different regions in different period has shifted to different directions, specifically as the upper reaches have shifted to the east, the middle reaches have shifted to the south, and the lower reaches have shifted to the north. The cultivated landscapes were characterized from separated into continuous land patches, the area of cultivated land patches have become bigger in past periods and the landscape heterogeneity declined. Population and socioeconomic growth were the major reasons for the continued expansion of cultivated land in Akesu river basin, and the construction of the water conservancy facilities ensured the irrigation of the increasing cultivated land.