Abstract:Human activities are the one of major causes for land-use changes. The objective of this study is to detect the land-use changes in the area of Manwan hydropower station by using multitemporal satellite image data, and the relationships between land-use changes and socio-economic factors were analyzed by using multivariate analysis. In order to achieve this objective, three different periods′ land-use maps were derived from the Landsat image data which acquired in 1991, 2001, and 2004. Moreover, the universal kriging interpolation was use to make the text file of socio-economic data into continuous surfaces raster data. A spatial database of land-use changes combining with socio-economic factors was built in ArcView program. With the help of multivariate analysis of CCA ordination method, the relationships between land-use changes and socio-economic factors in the study area were conducted. The results show that the land-use changes are correlated with socio-economic drivers both from 1991 to 2001 and from 2001 to 2004. Between 1991 and 2001, the land-use changes are strongly correlated with population (POP), gross yield of corps (GYC), population of agriculture people (A-POP), and per capita arable land (PCAL). However, A-POP, GYC, LSP were identified as the main factors for land-use from 2001 to 2004 in the study area. The results also indicated that the multivariate analysis method can be adopted for the study of other types of land use change and in other regions.