Abstract: Relying on information extracted from a detailed survey of land use in Nanyang County in late Qing Dynasty , this article analyzes the landscape characteristics and human activities on cultivated land in Nanyang County.Using Map Info technology to examine land productivity and population supporting capacity provides an effective method for quantifying regional man-land relationships.Moreover this technique provides a reasonable method to evaluate the intensity of land use and the distribution of cultivated.The article finds that land distribution tended to vary with the topography , and that land use intensity was closely related to the crop structural adjustment in the agricultural land.