Remote sensing shows considerable potential for ecological monitoring, ecological restoration and sustainable development. The Loess Plateau has been experiencing reforestation, reducing arable land area since the ecological restoration projects kept on increasing in the past two decades. Those projects were being developed for improvement of the degraded forest and sustainable development, which have resulted in significant changes in the ecological environment and ecological layout of the Loess Plateau. The spatio-temporal evolution of the ecosystem in the Loess Plateau was analyzed based on the TM satellite retrieved land use information. The results showed that: (1) from 1997 to 2018, significant changes have taken place in the ecosystem pattern of the Loess Plateau, mainly represented by an increase of 19.34% and 6.91% in the area of forest and grassland, a decrease of 22.15% in the arable land area, and a decrease of 5.01% in the area of unused land. Ecosystem pattern in the Loess Plateau has shifted from the cultivated land domination to forests domination. The arable land area in the Loess Plateau decreased the most, by a magnitude of 18554.54 km², which decreases of 61%, mainly converted to forest and grasslands, 11617 km² and 11442 km² respectively. (2) During the past two decades, temperature has shown a weak decreasing trend about 0.06 ℃ while precipitation has shown an increasing trend about 57%, with a magnitude of 197 mm, which is suitable for reforestation and vegetation restoration. There were obvious regional differences in ecosystem changes in the Loess Plateau. The overall climate changes were in a direction in favor of vegetation restoration. However, the changes in the regional ecosystem pattern of the Loess Plateau were significantly different. Under such a climatic background, the changes of ecosystems in Yulin and Yan'an were considerably higher than those in Tongchuan, indicating that ecological restoration projects were the main driving for studying changes in ecosystem patterns, and climate background changes were auxiliary driving factor. (3) Affected by the ecological restoration projects, the transfer direction of the ecosystem in the hilly and gully region of the Loess Plateau mainly showed the conversion of arable land into forests and grasslands; the wind and sand fixation projects promoted the conversion of unused land in the Maowusu Desert area into grasslands. (4) The impacts of human activities on the ecosystem were reduced, from 、0.08% to -16.06%, which mainly because of the conversion of farmland to forests, and windbreak and sand fixation projects have transformed sandy land into grassland. The results show that the ecological restoration projects have made a significant reduction in arable and unused land in the Loess Plateau, and that forests and grasslands have been greatly reduced. Implementation of restoration projects was the primary driving force, and climate background changes were auxiliary factors. However, this study has not addressed the quantitative assessment of the contribution of the driving factors, which were also one of the key directions for the future research. Meanwhile, it was found that in the past 10 years, two types of changes have occurred in the Maowusu desert in northern Yulin City. The development of agriculture activities will play a major role in promoting the local grain output and economic growth, but the impact of this change on the effectiveness of desert management needs to be addressed in a future study.