Abstract: The Yangtze River City Group is under the fastest urbanization process in Jiangsu, which caused the most obvious land use change. Study of land use change and its impact on carbon storage of terrestrial ecosystems in the Yangtze River City Group is of great significance to the study of low-carbon land use in Jiangsu Province. Based on the five-phase 30m land use raster data, soil sample data, forest vegetation inventory data, crop data and empirical data, this research assessed the spatio-temporal change of land use and its impact on carbon storage from 1995 to 2015. The main results were as follows: (1) from 1995 to 2015, about 15.90% of the land area hadtheir land use type changed. Among them, built-up land occupy cultivate land was the main land transfer type, with total transferred area reached to 4 161.78 km2, accounting for 85.86% of the total transferred out of cultivated land; (2) due to the land use changes, total carbon storage decreased by 472.63×104 t, of which soil organic carbon increased by 110.28×104 t, and the vegetation carbon decreased by 582.91×104 t; (3) the transfer of cultivated land to built-up land was the main determinant for the loss of carbon storage, with amount of 406.40×104 t, and accounted for 85.99% of the total carbon storage loss; (4) in the future, by means of increasing ecological land area, controlling built-up land, and optimizing land use structure, the Yangtze River City Group can reduce the disturbance to terrestrial ecosystem carbon balance and increase regional carbon storage.