Abstract: Land sustainable use is the core content and important basis of regional sustainable development. We made a quantitative evaluation of regional land use sustainability, and the research results can provide a scientific basis for making strategies, policies, and countermeasures of land sustainable use. In order to explore the degree of land sustainable use and its spatial-temporal pattern in Chinese provinces, with the ecological footprint model based on an improved "national hectare," this study constructed a land use sustainability coefficient, and evaluated the state of sustainable land use of Chinese provinces, with a time span from 1998 to 2008. We adjusted the unit of measurement of yield factor and equivalence factor of ecological footprint model, that is, we adjusted a global hectare to a national hectare, and further calculated a per capita ecological footprint and a per capita ecological capacity. We finally stated a land use sustainability coefficient for using a per capita ecological capacity divided by the sum of a per capita ecological footprint and a per capita ecological capacity. Using the evaluation results as the basis, with a ArcGIS 10.0 software platform, this paper drew a spatial-temporal pattern map of the degree of land sustainable use in Chinese provinces, and analyzed the spatial data. The results showed that: From the temporal variation characteristics, the degree of land sustainable use was generally relatively low in Chinese provinces, and there appeared to be a land-use deficit phenomenon in different degrees, the degree of land sustainable use showed a rising trend for nearly 71% of Chinese provinces, but their growth was not balanced, and some of them showed larger changes. From the spatial pattern and its evolution characteristics, the degree of land sustainable use in the eastern coastal regions, northeast regions, central regions, and western regions showed a progressively declining trend. Although the local provinces of China had some changes, the overall spatial pattern showed minor changes. Those provinces in which the degree of land was in Ⅱb, Ⅲc and Ⅲb were decreased by 4, 6, and 13 percentage points. On the contrary, in these provinces in which the degree of land was in Ⅲa, were increased by 23 percentage points, and were mostly in the central and western regions. The spatial pattern of the land use sustainability coefficient presented a continuous optimization and showed a benign development trend. However, the cardinal number of a per capita ecological footprint was higher, and the rate of change of a per capita ecological footprint and a per capita ecological capacity had a smaller gap. These two reasons became a major factor of a land use deficit, and a rapid growth of population was also an important factor. Trade and regional complementarities can solve this problem. This study provides a scientific basis and decision-making reference for creating strategies, policies, and measures of land development and sustainable use in Chinese provinces.