Abstract: In this study, Maluan Bay of Xiamen was chosen as a study area of land exploitation. Thus, temporal evolution characteristics of land use in terrestrial and sea areas of Maluan Bay were analyzed in terms of scale， speed and structure. The results show that (1) in the past 60 years, Maluan Bay experienced a dynamic changing process from “largescale beach reclamation” to “rapid expansion of aquaculture and industry” and then to “urban expansion”. Changes in the land use accelerated the growth rate which was 2.1 times faster in the last 30 years than that in the previous 30 years and especially it was 4.7 times faster in the last 10 years. The change of land use in sea area is faster than that in terrestrial area as a whole. (2) As an area of typical coastal bay in China, the land use of Maluan Bay has the patterns driven by agricultural modernization from 1957 to 1987, by agricultural moder nization and industrialization from 1987 to 2007 and by urbanization from 2007 to 2017. Basically, agricultural modernization promoted the development of sea area, while industrialization and urbanization promoted the development of terrestrial area and urbanization promoted the fastest land use change. Sea exploitation was mainly for the beach reclamation in the early stage and then for sea reclamation. It is addressed that terrestrial and sea coordination calls for compatible land development policy according to the comprehensive benefit of land exploitation in specific developmental stages.