Comparative analysis of land cover change detection in an Inner Mongolia grassland area. Acta Ecologica Sinica,2014,34(24) :7192鄄 7201.Abstract: Accurate and timely data on land cover change are not only important for global change study, but also provide significant foundation for decision鄄making, management and monitoring in resources sustainable application. As the modern remote sensing systems have provided a huge amount of data for land cover change study, remote sensing technology has become the most economical and effective way to acquire land cover change information. With the rapid development of earth observation technology, image resolution has been improved gradually, and remote sensing change detection algorithms have been remarkably developed. Remote sensing change detection methods are changing from traditional pix鄄level detection to object鄄oriented detection. In order to explore the validity and applicability of object鄄oriented change detection methods, we compared and evaluated object鄄oriented change detection methods and traditional change detection methods using Landsat TM / ETM+ images in the grassland area of Baotou and Ordos in Inner Mongolia. The results showed that object鄄oriented change detection methods had significant advantages both in overall accuracy and kappa coefficient. The overall accuracies