Cultivated land resources are the material foundation that mankind rely on for existence. The change of quantity and quality is directly related to national food security and social stability. Based on the RS and GIS technologies, this article took Shandong Province as the study area and the years of 2000 and 2005 as the study period and made use of the MODIS product data to assure the simultaneous research of the large-scale area. After collecting and sorting out the methods and indices about cultivated land assessment at home, the Pressure-State-Response Model (PSR) was adopted, and slope, light-temperature potential productivity, NDVI, TVDI and unit yield were chosen as the assessment indices. Each index was given weight by using the expert evaluation method and the cultivated land quality was then calculated. Through the analysis of the assessment results, three conclusions were drawn. First, the overall quality of the cultivated land in Shandong was relatively high. Second, the quality of the cultivated land in Shandong generally decreased from the southwest to the northeast except that the land in the middle was the lowest. Third, the overall cultivated land quality of Shandong slightly declined during the years from 2000 to 2005. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of National University of Singapore.
