Abstract: In order to analyze the impact of land use patterns on the spatial distribution characteristics of environmental variables in different aquatic ecological functional areas, a field survey was conducted in the Hun-Tai River Basin from 2009 to 2016. A total of 407 paired data were collected from 300 sampling sites, including 26 environmental variables and the Landsat TM remote-sensing image data in 2010 and 2015. Principal component analysis, Spearman correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis were used to select the main environmental factors and analyze the spatial variations of water quality index (WQI) of the basin. Combined with the land use types from different aquatic ecological functional regions and sampling sites, the impacts of land use patterns on the main environmental variables of river were explored. The results showed that electrical conductivity (EC), dissolved oxygen (DO), suspended solids (SS), 5-day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD₅), chemical oxygen demand (COD_Cr) and ammonium nitrogen (NH₄⁺) were the main environmental variables affecting the water quality of the Hun-Tai River Basin. The WQI in aquatic eco-region andⅡ was higher and the water quality was better with average values of 86.80±6.47 and 85.57±6.69, respectively. The proportions of sampling sites with good grades were 30.41% and 21.70%, respectively. The water quality in the aquatic eco-region Ⅲ was poor with an average value of 72.92±13.75. Among the 6 land use types, construction and forest land were the driving factors that affect the values of WQI. With the decrease in forest land and the increase in the construction land, the WQI gradually decreased (R_adj²=0.25). In the aquatic eco-region Ⅲ, the proportions of sampling sites with good grades were 0.94%, whereas the proportions of sampling sites with poor grades exceeded 50%. The present study shows that the impact of land use on the main environmental variables of the river is significantly different in the three aquatic ecological functional areas. The rapid increase of construction land and the substantial decrease of forest land are main driving factors affecting the water quality in aquatic eco-region Ⅲ of the Hun-Tai River Basin.