Monitoring and mapping the effects of human activities on land performance change is necessary for optimizing regional land use structure and evaluating the effects of ecological programs. In this study, NDVI data derived from SPOT VEGETATION and monthly rainfall data during 1998-2005 were used to estimate vegetation change in Shaanxi province. Corrected NDVI (C-NDVI), the temporal trends in the differences between the observed NDVI and the NDVI predicted by the rainfall, was developed to evaluate the effects of human activities on vegetation change (degradation and restoration).through filtering out the effects of rainfall on NDVI-value change. Also, the spatial pattern of C-NDVI was analyzed. The results showed that, (i) there was a strong relationship between integrated monthly NDVI data and rainfall volume, while the correlation coefficient increased from south to north and it had the lowest value in central part of Shaanxi due to large areas of irrigated farmland, which had low dependence on rainfall. In the southern part of the province, which has a more humid climate low coefficient was delineated. (ii) The spatial patterns of human-induced vegetation change in 1998-2005 were obviously different in four parts. In the north of Shaanxi, the C-NDVI suggested a upward trend in the capacity of vegetation restoration, with the annual increase rate of 2.1%-4.1%, due to the “Grain for Green” program and “preventing and combating desertification and sandification” program. With large areas of irrigated farmland and urban land, the C-NDVI in central part indicated degraded vegetation in urban sprawl areas and it had remained more or less constant over 8 years in irrigated field. In the central-northern part and southern parts, large areas of forestland represented a downward trend in vegetation coverage, which could be understood as the vegetation degradation, and the reason might be the seasonal disafforestation in economic forest land.