Abstract: For understanding the present situation of land use in upper Yangtze River basin, four typical spots where soil and water loss are serious were first confirmed by using spot check survey. In every typical spot, taking one 1∶10 000 topographic map cover area as the investigation target, the land use survey in field, statistics and comparison analysis were implemented. The results show as follows: The agricultural land is the major land use type in upper Yangtze River basin, in which cropland and forest land are main sorts. Among the cultivated lands, sloping field is mostly threatened land which can cause soil loss easily, and its percent of soil loss is the highest, near one half of whole area of farmland, so soil and water conservation in upper Yangtze River basin is one difficult task. Meantime, investigated data indicate that there exist spatial differences in the four typical spots. 