Abstract: Land degradation risk has a close relation to land use types,land-use change will inevitably have potential impacts on land degradation.Here a surface cover index based on spectral mix analysis(SMA) is used to evaluate potential land degradation risk in He-Bao-Pian mining area of northwestern Shanxi Province during 1990—2006,and the impacts of land-use change on land are analyzed.The results show that the overall trend of land degradation risk is decreasing during the study period,the main reasons may be wasteland development and implementation of related ecological construction projects such as Grain for Green project.Coal mining generally has negative impacts on land degradation,however they are mostly offset by the land-use change caused by the development of mining industry and a series of ecological construction project in the study area.