Abstract: Historical aerial photographs from 1976 to 1989 and GIS technology were used to analyze the spatial pattern of land use and its changes in eastern Shenyang. The results showed that the mean patch size of coniferous forest and rice lands was increase, while the unirrigated land, deciduous forest and brush were decreased. Fractal dimension was slightly increased, indicating that the patch shape became complicated gradually. The indices of diversity and evenness were increased while the indices of dominance and contagion were decreed fm 1.6327 and 89.2022 to 1.3226 and 88.2744 respectively, which indicated that the spatial distribution of patches trended to be uniformed, and that the status of aggregate distribution of patches would be decentralized with time. The cause of these changes of land use pattern in eastern Shenyang was also explained.

Key words: Land use pattern, Fractal dimension, Patch, soil water, temporal stability, Heihe River, ecotone, spatial distribution