In China, the area of red soil in South China in second only to the loess plateau in terms of area of soil erosion. Changting County in Fujian Province suffers the most serious water and soil erosion where its forest vegetation has been seriously damaged. Intensive large-scale measures to control erosion have been conducted twice in this area during the early 1980s and 2000s. Driven by both of the control measures and social and economic policies, the ecological environment there has been improved significantly and Changting has become a typical example of soil erosion control in China. Based on Landsat satellite images, this study extracted 6 vegetation fraction distribution maps from 1975 to 2013, and analyzed the variation in vegetation cover and landscape pattern during three major periods: 1975-1989, 1989-2000, and 2000-2013. The different terrain characteristics (such as height and slope) and distances from residential areas were also extracted. The results showed the following. (1) The average vegetation coverage of Changting County increased from 47.02% in 1975 to 71.47% in 2013, and the structure of vegetation coverage has been transformed into one dominated by medium-high and high coverage. In the middle of the county, vegetation coverage in the Hetian basin and its vicinity rose from 30.83% in 1975 to 60.34% in 2013. Widely and contiguously distributed forests with low cover in the basin have been replaced by a higher coverage of coniferous forest patches. With the implementation of soil erosion control measures, the vegetation cover of the Hetian basin increased by 8.47% and 13.81%, respectively, during the two intensive control period from 1975 to 1989 and 2000 to 2013. (2) With regards to the landscape pattern of the vegetation cover, the average patch areas of the low, and moderately low level vegetation cover in Changting County showed a trend of falling variability, and patch density increased. In contrast, the area with moderately high and high cover has shown greater volatility. The result showed that ecological intervention leads to the original good vegetation coverage area become more focus, and the poor coverage area distribution gradually broken at the same time. (3) The increase in vegetation coverage has occurred mainly in an area with an elevation lower than 600 m or slope less than 25°, particularly in the area at an altitude ranging from 400 m to 600 m or with a slope ranging from 5°to 15°. It is worth noting that, during 2000-2013, the vegetation coverage increased by more than 10% in the area below 600 m elevation and slope from 5°to 25°, which demonstrates the destruction and restoration of forest vegetation are affected by terrain, and closely related to effects of human activity. (4) Distance to villages reflects the intensity of the impact of human activity on vegetation destruction and restoration. In the area within 50 m from villages, vegetation coverage is the lowest, and it recovers slowest during the periods when the soil erosion control policy was implemented. With increasing distance to villages, the vegetation fraction increased both in value and percentage with time, although this tendency decreases to a stable state in areas more than 1.2 km from village edges. Moreover, human activities also led to increasing fragmentation of the vegetation landscape around residential areas; however, this phenomenon becomes gradually weaker with ecological management under the guidance of the government. Consequently, the vegetation coverage and landscape pattern changes with ecological management and the long-term effects of human activity in this area, with an increasing recovery speed.