Climate change has shifted adaptable species in Qilian Mountains, and it is necessary to explore the effect of conversion of vegetation types. In addition, the limitations of traditional vegetation survey methods are that they can not continuously monitor at large-scale, while remote sensing monitoring can go over this disadvantages. Based on remote sensing and plot survey, this paper explored the differences of soil properties, herb diversity and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), enhanced vegetation index (EVI), normalized difference moisture index (NDMI), moisture stress index (MSI), chlorophyll index (CI), meris terrestrial chlorophyll index (MTCI) between the initial shrublands and the forest afforested in the Gangou Watershed. In the short-period afforestation areas, the results showed that only the index related to water were significantly different. The soil moisture was decreased (P<0.01) after afforestation. The MSI and NDMI detected from April to May proved that the water of forest was higher (P<0.01) than shrublands. The water related index in July to August and remaining index without significant difference between the two vegetation types. Soil organic matter decreased slightly after afforestation (P >0.05). In the correlation between vegetation index and field index, soil organic matter and Shannon index were positively correlated with CI (P<0.05), vegetation cover was negatively correlated with NDMI(P<0.05), and the rest of the correlation was poor, the biomass of shrublands was overestimated relative to the tree on EVI and NDVI. In conclusion, the current afforestation didn't significantly improve the ecological environment and has consumed water to support tree to grow without pressure. Results of this study reveal the effect of afforestation in the initial shrublands and we discuss the applicability of remote sensing on vegetation monitoring, providing guide for the plantation and monitoring of remote sensing on vegetation in a small scale.