In recent years Chinese grassland in the north faces a very serious problem of landscape ecosystem degradation, which has attracted many concerns not only from domestic China but also from neighboring countries such as Korea and Japan. Over-grazing has been commonly recognized as one of the reasons leading to the degradation in the region. which has totally 312 counties scattering among 11 provinces and autonomous regions in Northern China. In this study we conduct the dynamic monitoring on the

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... grass productivity and grazing loading in the counties using an approach of integrating GIS with remote sensing techniques. The objective is to develop a spatial GIS database to have a dynamic monitoring on the grassland productivity and the grazing density in this region. The results of the monitoring indicate that grass production of the major grasslands in Northern China is decreasing in recent decades, at a rate of 10%-40%. Significant decrease was found in Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Qinghai and Gansu. Compared with the grass production, overgrazing is a common phenomenon in grazing region. Among the 153 counties in the grazing region, over 50% is with over-loading of herd. Similar phenomenon is also observed in semi-grazing region where over 80% of the 159 counties have various degrees of herd over-loading. During the 1990's, the over-loading became even more serious. Our study reveals that the over-loading of herd is higher in the semi-grazing region than in the grazing region. On the basis of the above results from the monitoring, several policies and measures has been suggested in the study for regulation of a better administration to the grassland grazing in Northern China.