Abstract: As the most potential big river delta, the Yellow River Delta has distinct land resource advantages, good location and abundant natural resources. The author took Dongying City as the study area and analyzed the spatiotemporal characteristics of land use from 1992 to 2010 in this area, and explored the socioeconomic factors and driving force of human activities which caused the land use change. The results showed: (1) The overall trend was the increase of building land, water body, salt pan and forest area, and the decrease of the arable land, intertidal zone, grassland and unused land. Among the changes, building land increased by 5.92%. (2) The study area mainly switched among cultivated land, building land, salt pan and water body. There were 355.79 km2 arable land became building land, 225.75 km2 intertidal zone became salt pan. The conversion between cultivated land, salt pan, building land and water body occurred frequently. (3) The number of eight kinds of land plaque was reduced to 32892 from 51650. And 7 landscape indicators in arable land were reduced. (4) The analysis of driving factor in land- use change of the research area indicated that policy guidance was the main factor to influence land-use change in the area; while the rising population and rapid urbanization were the direct driving force to a significant reduction of arable land.