The Natural Forest Resources Protection Project in Xinjiang was launched in December 2000. It has lasted for 16 years as of the research period. This study provides data support for monitoring the changes of forest land area and types,exploring the changing trend of forest area,objectively evaluating the implementation effect of the natural protection project in the region,and implementing the protection and management measures in the next stage of forest area. Such methods as the area of woodland,sparse woodland,shrub woodland and other types of land were used to reflect the changes of forest land types. Based on the data of Landsat7 ETM + in 2000 and Landsat8 OLI in 2016,the regional distribution of forest land type change,the trend of forest land type change and the causes of change were analyzed by using maximum likelihood classification and confusion matrix. In 2016,the overall classification accuracy was 90.68%,and the Kappa coefficient was 0.87. The results showed that:(1)from 2000 to 2016,there was an increase in woodland area:35 234.2 hm²;(2)The area of sparse woodland decreased by 252 355.2 hm²;(3)The area of shrub land increased by 244 606.3 hm²,and other types of area increased by 27 485.2 hm²;(4)compared with the same period in 2000,the change trend of forest land area in 2016 was as follows:the forest land area in Aletai Branch increased by 9.6%,Burjin Branch increased by 11.7%,Fuyun Branch increased by 5.9%,Habahe Branch increased by 20.8%,Fuhai Branch increased by 22.9%,Qinghe Branch increased by 12.5%,but the area of forested land in Two-river Source Nature Reserve decreased by 7.5%. The forest land change in Natural Forest Protection Project(NFPP)area shows a good development trend in general,and the results of the implementation of NFPP are good obviously. However,the distribution of forest land types in forest areas is still unbalanced. The proportion of woodland and sparse forest land is small. The proportion of other types of forest land and shrub land is large. The protection of sparse forest land should be strengthened in future forest protection projects.