Changes in land use/cover patterns of the Yellow River Basin in China have triggered ecological issues including vegetation degradation and desertification, aggravating ecological vulnerability, further constrain sustainable and high-quality development seriously. We assessed temporal-spatial changes and driving mechanisms of the ecological vulnerability in the Lanzhou-Baiyin Section of the Yellow River Basin (LBSYRB) in China from 2000 to 2020 applied the pressure-state-response framework, explore the effect of land use shifts on it. The research results indicated that: (1) The land use patterns of the LBSYRB dominated by cultivated land (30.15 %) and grassland (59.48 %), with particularly notable expansion of construction land, increasing by 558.87 km2; (2) In recent 20 years, the ecological vulnerability of LBSYRB was moderately vulnerable, and the general trend shown a fluctuating decline from 0.432 to 0.425; (3) The spatial pattern of ecological vulnerability in the LBSYRB exhibited a 'middle-high and south-low', with the low-elevation areas centered in the mainstream of the Yellow River decreasing gradually to higher-elevation areas on both sides of the river; (4) In terms of land use, construction land having the greatest ecological vulnerability and forest land having the lowest vulnerability; so that controlling the sprawl of construction land would be key to reduce ecological vulnerability; (5) According to results from Geodetector, average annual precipitation (PRE), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), net primary productivity (NPP), and average annual temperature (TEM) were the key factors affecting the ecological vulnerability of LBSYRB(their q were 0.33, 0.32, 0.30 and 0.27, respectively.)