Abstract: In the long history of human development, cultivated land has always played a very important role. In the protection of cultivated land, there are many things that human beings must do. To deal with the contradiction between supply and demand of cultivated land is the key to food security, and it is also a difficult problem to be solved by human beings.With the continuous economic development and population growth of Nanhua County, there are more and more underlying reasons for the change of cultivated land. Based on remote sensing images and GIS software, the spatial change trend of cultivated land in Nanhua County in recent five years was analyzed, and the driving factors of cultivated land change in Nanhua County were analyzed by SPSS software. According to the analysis, since 2015, the cultivated land area of Nanhua County has been in the process of increasing, from gentle increase to rapid increase. The spatial distribution pattern of cultivated land in Nanhua County is relatively obvious. The increased cultivated land is mainly located in most areas with good water supply and soil resources in Nanhua County, while the area of cultivated land reduction is mainly distributed in the edge of the original cultivated land and adjacent areas. Generally speaking, the cultivated land in Nanhua county is on the increase trend. According to the principal component analysis, per capita income of farmers, gross agricultural product, total social fixed asset investment, and food production are the main drivers affecting the change of arable land area.

Key words: cultivated land change, GIS, driving force, Nanhua County