The biocapacity is an important material foundation of regional sustainable development. In order to explore the spatio-temporal pattern of biocapacity in inland rivers, arid China in the future, for a case study of the Shiyang River Basin, using the CA-Markov model as a predication method and choosing 10 main driving factors influencing the biocapacity, we predicted the land use and assessed biocapacity in 2022 based on Landsat^TM images in 1992, 2002, and 2012. First of all, by comparing the predicted land use with the actual land use situation in 2012, we got the Kappa coefficient of 0.7956, which showed that the driving factors and the CA-Markov model were reliable for predicting the land use of the basin. Second, based on the model above, we predicted the land use condition and assessed biocapacity in 2022 with the year 2012 as a starting point. The results showed the following:in the Shiyang River Basin as a whole, the distribution pattern of biocapacity per unit area in 2022 will be similar to the situation in 1992, 2002, and 2012; however, there was remarkable spatial heterogeneity within the basin. The total biocapacity of the basin in 1992-2022 has been increasing since the turning point in 2002, and the increase of biocapacity in the built-up area was the most significant part of them. In the comparison with 2012, the biocapacity of the forestland in the mountainous area of the upstream reach and the built-up area in the oasis area of the midstream reach in 2022 should increase faster than other areas of the river basin, and there was a significant patch cohesion. Nonetheless, in the oasis areas of midstream and downstream reaches, the changes of farmland and grassland biocapacity should be complicated and the distribution of the land use patch should be discrete and fragmented. The frequent transition of land use types in 2012-2022 should lead to a large structural change of the biocapacity in the river basin, including an important contribution to the increase of biocapacity supported by the transfer-out area of unused land in 2022. Above all, the results provided a more extensive understanding of the spatio-temporal dynamic and spatial pattern of biocapacity in the Shiyang River Basin. Ecological engineering such as the Grain for Green Project will continue to produce obvious ecological benefits in the future.