Agricultural land-use change has directly or indirectly affected and is affecting many aspects of the natural environment. China is one of the representative areas for understanding the global and regional environmental changes induced by cropland change caused by the extensive and intensive impacts on natural environment in its long agricultural history. This paper reviewed the achievements of the historical LUCC (land use and cover change) reconstruction based on historical documents and archaeological records,and the environmental impacts caused by land reclamation in China in recent years. The main conclusions are shown as follows: (1)China has unique advantages in the study of historical cropland reconstruction because of its abundant historical and archaeological data sources,including figures related to cropland,such as cropland area,tax,and population,etc.;location-related information on agriculture,such as archaeological sites,settlements,road network,administrative systems,etc.;literature descriptions on the history of land reclamation and agriculture development. (2)The earliest estimation on the area of cropland or fraction of cropland on national scale is as early as the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period;the fraction of cropland cover reconstructed based on historical documents on provincial(Lu)scale has been already reconstructed since the past 1000 years in the traditional agricultural region of China,and county scale over the last 300 years in the regions of Northeast China,North China,etc.;and down scaling by the allocation model,the spatial resolution of the grid derived from the historical documents-based reconstructions in last 300 years could reach 10km*10km or even 1km*1km. These regional reconstructions are more accurate than the current widely used global datasets. (3)There are mainly three times large-scale expansion of cropland reclamation in the Western Han Dynasty,Song Dynasties and middle Qing Dynasty,respectively. Vegetation deterioration,soil erosion correspondingly extended from the northern China to the southern China,from plains to low hills and remote mountains. The cropland reclamation over the last 300 years has led to increase of carbon emissions and identifiable regional climate changes. Prospects on the studies of historical cropland cover change and its environmental impacts in China should be integrated into international researches on past land use/cover. The main focuses are on extending the duration of reconstruction,fining the spatial resolution of reconstruction units,and improving the allocation model.