The spatiotemporal dynamic and space pattern changes of Ecological carrying capacity(ECC) in a given watershed is an important topic in the field of watershed ecology and development sustainabiliby research on the basis of the remote sensing (RS) data and transfer matrix of land use with the help of geographic information system (GIS) techniques.The paper, for a case study of the Jinghe Watershed with Ecological Footprint method, estimated the ECC time series and analyzed the spatial distribution, spatiotemporal dynamic and transfer matrix of ECC using high resolution remote sensing data of 1986,1995,2000 and 2008 during 23 years.The results showed that the spatial distribution of ECC was significantly uneven in this region, in which the ECC in southern part of the watershed is greater than the northern part, tended to descend from southeastern to northeastern part and ascend from upstream and downstream gradually.As a whole, the differences between ECC were caused by different geography characteristics, environment conditions and land use/cover, and total ECC increased from 1986 to 1995 and decreased from 1995 to 2008, especially after 2000(a point of inflection).The transfer matrix of ECC showed the transfer changes of ECC of 6 major categories land are frequent.The amount of total change for cropland was found largest, followed by forest, pasture, building-up land, water area and unused land.The change in ECC of cropland was nearly a pure swap-type of change to forest and pasture after 2000.The results provided a more extensive understanding on the spatiotemporal dynamic and space pattern of ECC in Jinghe Watershed and its changes really were caused by Land use/cover change after 2000 with the driving force came from the State campaign of Grain for Green Project introduced in 1999.