Abstract: Taking the Yellow River basin as the research object, 7 index factors were selected according to three levels: terrain conditions, natural environment and human activities, and an ecological sensitivity evaluation system was constructed. AHP was used to determine the weight of each factor, and GIS weighted superposition method was used to comprehensively evaluate the ecological sensitivity of the Yellow River basin. The results showed that there were significant differences in the spatial distribution of ecological sensitivity in the Yellow River basin, with a high distribution pattern in the middle and upper reaches and a low distribution pattern in the lower reaches. As a whole, the middle－sensitive area was dominant with an area of 335, 900 km2, accounting for 42.25% of the total basin area; the area of the high－sensitive area and the extremely high－sensitive area was 173, 700 km2, accounting for 21.85% of the total basin area.