Abstract: Rural settlements are critical ecological-production-living spaces in rural areas. Exploring its spatial pattern and evolution process are significant for optimizations of land resources. The spatial-temporal evolution characteristics and driving forces of rural settlements in Jiangxi Province between 2005 and 2015 were analyzed based on remote sensing data by using the methods including grid analysis, transect investigation and geographical detector. It has been found that there were a large number of rural settlements in Jiangxi province, which were highly dispersed in larger spatial scales and agglomerated in smaller spatial scales. The spatial pattern of rural settlements in Jiangxi Province showed a north-south differentiation, i.e. more patches and larger total areas in the north while less patches and smaller total areas in the south. It was also found that there were generally more settlements in lowlands and areas closing to cities and towns. Jiangxi Province has experienced accelerated rural-urban migration in the past decades. Nevertheless, the number and total area of rural settlements increased by 35.8% and 21.4%, respectively, showing an expansion to cities, towns and main roads. In contrast, the decrease of rural residential area happened in mountainous areas and the peripheral areas of big cities owing to ecological immigrant project and rural residential land consolidation. Generally, the area of rural settlements was become more fragmentated. The geographical detector analysis indicate that the main factors influencing county level rural settlement patterns are agricultural and economic development, population growth and topographical conditions.