This paper took Weigan-Kuqa River Basin as the study area in the arid northwest China. Firstly, the basin was divided into five sub-watersheds by using the ArcGIS hydrological analysis module and DEM data. Secondly, remote sensing Landsat TM images at the same phase were selected in 1998 and 2011 as the main data and land use was classified by using support vector machine (SVM) method. Thirdly, the classification results were converted into the grid format and then Fragstats software was used to calculate landscape indices of the whole basin and its five sub-watersheds, and on this basis the landscape pattern changes were analyzed. The results showed that the areas of landscape types of five sub-watersheds were very different, grassland landscape accounted for a larger proportion in the sub-watershed A and D, while mountains and barren land in sub- watershed B, and sandy landscape in the sub-watershed C and E; in the past 13years, land use type of transformation mainly occurred among the cultivated land, forest land and grassland. The number of plaques, landscape fragmentation and edge density of sub-watershed B, C, E increased faster than sub-watershed A and D, it suggested that the impact of human activities on the landscape pattern of the core oasis is lower than on the oasis-desert Ecotone.