Abstract: Quantifying the Spatiotemporal characteristics of urban expansion is necessary to identify the process of urban expansion and understand the ecological response of urbanization. Based on Landsat TM/OLI images, this paper analyzed the urban expansion of 3 provincial cities and 4 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt in recent 30 years, including the analysis of the Spatiotemporal change and expansion mode of the construction land, and the ecological effect of the expansion. The results showed that: (1) The urban land has increased linearly over the past 30 years,but the average expansion rate is reduced in 2006-2016 years, which indicated that the urban land is transformed from the incremental expansion to stock development, but the transformation of prefecture-level city lags behind the provincial cities. (2) The proportion of edge expansion is declining, whereas infilling and leapfrog are increasing, which reflected the urban expansion is transforming from extensive rapid expansion to intensive. (3) The process of construction land from rapid expansion to stability is consistent with the vegetation cover from degradation to control, which confirmed the temporal-spatial correlation of construction land expansion and vegetation coverage. The negative value of the ecosystem service value caused by urban land expansion has been increasing, which greatly reduced the total value of ecosystem services. Facing with the problem of vegetation degradation and excessive negative of ecosystem services value, reasonable and effective implementation of planning policies are utmost important in the future urban development.