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The Grain for Green Project (GGP) is the largest land retirement/afforestation program in China; it was primarily initiated to reduce the soil erosion and improve the ecological conditions in the Loess Plateau in 1999. If effective, this massive regional effort will induce significant improvement in the vegetation conditions. At this time, the effectiveness of the GGP has not been well documented. Using Ansai County as a case study, we characterized the impact of the GGP on the land covers and landscape characteristics of this area by using multi-temporal Landsat MSS, TM and ETM+ images of 1978, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010. The results indicate that the land cover patterns and landscape characteristics in the county were greatly altered in a considerably short period. The implementation of the GGP increased the newly forested land substantially to 21.4% of the study area by 2010 at the cost of both cropland and shrub–grassland, which decreased by 46.3% and 18.8%, respectively, from 1995 to 2010. Consequently, the coverage of forested land (both older forest and newly forested land) increased from 12.4% in 1995 to 37.7% in 2010. Moreover, the GGP increased landscape fragmentation as indicated by a decreasing mean patch size and changes in class-level landscape indicators varied with land cover categories. The GGP induced improvement in vegetation conditions may benefit soil erosion alleviation and carbon sequestration in the Loess Plateau. However, the potential for the GGP to provide long-term positive ecological effects requires further study.
