Abstract: The impacts of human production and life on land use in mountainous area mainly focus on settlement ecological niches, taking the settlement ecological niche as the basic research element could effectively reveal the changing process of land use in micro-scale in mountainous area and the action mechanism between human and land. Temporal-spatial distribution and change characteristics of land use in the dry valley settlement ecological niche of the upper reaches of Min River from 1999 to 2009 were studied based on remote materials and Geographical Information System technology. The results showed that: (1) the farmland areas in the settlement ecological niche significantly decreased during the ten years, but the grassland and forest areas increased; (2) the land use in the settlement ecological niche was concentrated within the altitude range of 2001-2900 m and the gradient of 15o-35o, and the land use area of the south slope was higher than that of the north slope, and the land use area of the east slope was higher than that of the west slope; (3) the land use structure in high mountainous area in the settlement ecological niche tended to be well-aligned, but the land use structure in low-high mountainous area tended to have a disorder state. The land use in the settlement ecological niche in the upper reaches of Min River was in a quick adjustment stage, the farmland showed obvious non-agricultural characteristics, such as farmland changing to grassland, ecological forest and economic fruit forest. The main reason was attributed to the joint action of population decrease, ecological conservation policies and comparative benefits.