Abstract: The middle reaches of the Yangtze River is the central area of the Yangtze River industrial belts and an important area to form a connecting link between the east and the west of China. However, since 1990’s, the frequency of flood disasters and the economic loss caused by floods has increased continuously. Although flood disaster is closely related with physical factors, such as weather, geomorphology etc., unreasonable land use by human has increased the occurring possibility and intensity of flood disaster. By analyzing the relationship between land use and flood water level, the capacity of regulating flood of lake and river, and the economic loss, it is found that the unreasonable land exploitation and utilization of the flooddiversion and floodstorage areas, the building of sluices to reclaim land from lakes, and the exploitation of islets in the river are the key factors of land use in the middle reaches of Yangtze River to aggravate flood disasters. Therefore, some land use policies，such as compiling land use planning in areas fragile to flood disaster, carrying out the policy of “conversing agricultural polders to lake, emigrants for town construction”, developing “antiflood agriculture”, constructing flooddiversion and floodstorage areas, and improving land use efficiency, etc, are proposed for mitigating flood disasters. Furthermore, the possibility implement these policies and some problems to be resolved in the process of their implementation are analyzed.

Key words: land use, flood disaster, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River