To evaluate the quantitative effect of the topographic conditions on the spatial distribution of land use, the Shanxi Province is taken as the research area， to study four topographic factors (the elevation, the relief, the slope and the aspect) obtained from the DEM dataset, representing the digital topographic characteristics, and the spatial distribution of the land use is interpreted based on the remote sensing images, finally to analyze the spatial stratified heterogeneity, the spatial correlation and the interaction effect of the four digital topographic factors on the spatial distribution of the land use. It is shown that: (1) the relief and slope factors have the most remarkable spatial stratified heterogeneity effect (p<0.01); (2) the relief factor has the strongest spatial correlation effect (q=0.012), followed by the slope (q=0.010); (3) any two kinds of digital terrain indicators have a significant interaction enhancement; the interaction between the altitude and the relief has the strongest effect with the highest statistic value q of 0.034. Hence, the relief factor is the most important single factor affecting the spatial distribution of the land use, which plays an important role in the spatial distribution of the land use by combining the elevation factor.

digital terrain factor  /  land use type  /  geographical detector  /  spatial stratified heterogeneity  /  spatial correlation