In the karst area along with the rapid expansion of the city, the urban construction land extends in the gentle area between the mountains, and a large number of natural mountains were surrounded by construction land, and finally were inlaid in the urban built area, forming the urban remnant mountains (URMs). The URMs in karst mountainous cities were the main part of urban habitat and have many irreplaceable ecosystem service functions. Taking the built-up area of Guiyang city, a typical karst mountainous city, as an research area, the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of land use, landscape pattern and habitat quality (HQ) were studied based on the land use data from 2008 to 2018 by InVEST model. Finally, the geographical weighted regression model was used to reveal the response relationship between HQ and land use change. The results showed that:(1) from 2008 to 2018, the areas of cultivated land, URMs and woodland decreased by 94.56 km², 8.74 km² and 6.8 km² respectively. The land use change was mainly dominated by the transformation of cultivated land, URMs and woodland into construction land, and the fragmentation of landscape patches and spatial heterogeneity were gradually strengthened. (2) The spatial aggregation effect of HQ was obvious from 2008 to 2018, with a low average, and the proportion of low level HQ area increased from 38.29% in 2008 to 60.32% in 2018. The proportion of moderate and high level HQ area decreased by 1.95% and 4.15% respectively, the degraded HQ area reached 82.78 km², and the proportion of comparatively high level HQ area increased by 3.98%. The patches of HQ tended to be fragmented, diversified and uniform, and the high HQ areas mainly distributed in the urban parks and the URMs. (3) The HQ was positively correlated with the land use change of urban green space, URMs, woodland and water, but negatively correlated with the changes of land use of construction land, transportation land, cultivated land and unused land. The HQ changes were dominated by human activities. (4) URMs were the main contribution sources of high level HQ in mountainous cities. However, from 2008 to 2018, with the increase of the complexity of urban land use, the HQ of URMs was obviously degraded. This study contributes to further understanding of the relationship between land use change and HQ in karst mountainous cities and could provide scientific support for ecological conservation and landscape planning in China and other similar regions around the world.