Abstract: The carbon effect of land use change and its impact on climate change have been the focus of academic circles at home and abroad since the 1990s. Under the goal of carbon neutralization, how to achieve the purpose of carbon increase and emission reduction by optimizing land use is a new opportunity and challenge for the current academic research and natural resources authorities. Taking Jiangyin City as an example, this paper analyzes land use change of the city from 2000 to 2015 and its corresponding changes of vegetation carbon and soil carbon storage, and puts forward optimization suggestions for the future land use structure. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) From 2000 to 2015, the cultivated land area in Jiangyin City decreased year by year, mainly transformed into construction land, and the change range of other land use types is small. (2) Due to land use change, the carbon storage of vegetation in Jiangyin City decreased by 75 009.49 t and the carbon storage of soil decreased by 7 641.56 t. Among them, the transfer out of cultivated land and forest land led to the largest loss of carbon storage. (3) According to the historical land use change of Jiangyin City, based on the goal of maximizing carbon reserves, this paper puts forward suggestions on the optimization of land use structure in Jiangyin City. The results show that under the optimization mode, the carbon reserves of Jiangyin ecosystem will reach to 4.55 million t in 2030, an increase of 2 900 t compared with the natural growth mode.