Abstract:Based on remote sensing data and GIS platform, the change of land use and its spatial heterogeneity in Chaohu Lake Basin during the past 15 years (2000—2013) were analyzed. The results showed: 1) the land use structure had changed greatly with the tendency of the "three decline and one rise", namely, woodland, farmland, and water were decline, construction land increased. The farmland area and construction land area changed significantly. 2) Great changes of land use degree had taken place in Chaohu Lake Basin during the past 15 years. The reduced total area of weak and weaker level used land was 3 429 km2, which accounts for 24.61% of the total area of Chaohu Lake Basin. The increased total area of stronger and strongest level used land was 729 km2, which accounts for 5.23% of the total area of Chaohu Lake Basin. 3) Land use degree spatial heterogeneity in Chaohu Lake Basin during the past 15 years was analyzed by means of spatial statistics such as spatial autocorrelation analysis. The results showed that land use degree of Chaohu Lake Basin was highly positive global spatial autocorrelated with Moran’s I of 0.802 2 and 0.753 9, respectively, in 2000 and 2013. These results indicated that land use degree in Chaohu Lake Basin was not disorderly, but had obvious spatial agglomeration. LISA graph of local autocorrelation analysis showed that land use degree was closely related to the geographical locations of cell samplings. Mainly, High-high aggregation was in the region surrounding Hefei City which was the core of the region and low-low aggregation was in southwest forest region of Dabieshan Mountain and Chaohu Lake as the core of the surrounding region.