Abstract: Human activities and natural factors are two kinds of driving force in land desertification. The present study attempts to identify their relative roles in the land desertification of Yushenfu coal mining area. The study utilized the three stages TM remote sensing image data of 1989,2002 and 2011 on 1 ∶ 50 000 scale for land desertification map- ping and its dynamic change analysis. Combined with principal component analysis (PCA),the relative roles of human activities and natural factors in land desertification were identified in the study area. The results are:① Based on the remote sensing image data,the expressions of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and Albedo can be de- rived to rank desertification in the study area. ② The spatial distribution of land desertification presents a clear zona- tion pattern in mining area,the desertification in the Western mining area is heavier than that of the Eastern part. ③Land desertification area decreases 36. 7% and 27. 7% during the periods 1989—2002 and 2002—2011 respectively, which makes the desertification show a reversal trend. ④ The spatial distribution of land desertification is very different from West to East. The very severe and severe desertification areas decrease over the time in the Western mining area obviously,while there is a trend of rehabilitation firstly and then improvement in the East. ⑤ Coal mining activities and climate change account for 62. 16% and 14. 18% of the total variance,suggesting the main driving force of land desertification is human activities. The results show that water protected coal mine,grazing prohibition and tree plant- ing are the only way to rehabilitate the land degradation in Yushenfu coal mining area.