The negative effects of urban land expansion on ecological environment are increasingly becoming significant. Taking Hohhot City as the study area, this paper aims to adjust and optimize the Cellular model with multi-scenario simulation of urban land expansion based upon the analysis of the spatial and temporal characteristics of urban land expansion in recent years. In this paper, an evaluating system for ecological risk pressure is established to assess the ecological risk pressure resulted from urban land expansion under different circumstances. The evaluating system consists of four dimensions, namely, urban expansion, ecological landscape, grain security, and ecological degradation. Four conclusions are reported as follows. First of all, from 1990 to 2017, the urbanization expansion index of Hohhot was uninterrupted downward, and the expansion rate has seen a stage marked by an up-to-down fluctuation. We argue that the urban land expansion has manifested a strong periodical characteristic. Second, after making predictions for the expansion degree of urban land in 2025 and 2030 through the CA model, we conclude that only under the scenarios of agrarian protection and ecological economy, the expansion rate of construction land will manifest as a downward trend, and the index of expansion intensity will be in further decline. Third, during the study period, the pressures from urban expansion, landscape ecosystem, grain reserves, ecological degradation, and ecological risk have increased by 2.2%, 1.9%, 1.4%, 11% and 15%, respectively. These pressures lead to the intermediate level of the ecological risk forewarning. Last but not the least, by the end of 2030, the ecological risk pressure level, will upgrade from Ⅲ to IV under the scenarios of trend extrapolation and agrarian protection, and to V under the scenario of urbanization development. However, it will degrade from Ⅲ to Ⅱ under the scenario of ecological economy.