The Tailan River Watershed, a branch of the Aksu River Basin, is a glacier-melt runoff river and has a drainage area of 1 324 km~2. So far, there is still no detailed assessment of changes of the characteristics of the glaciers. Therefore, timely and correct assessment of glacier changes in the Tailan River to fill gaps in this region is urgent, and it has an extremely important significance for the Tailan River Watershed′s economic development and people's livelihood. 1∶50 000 topographic map data, Landsat ETM+ remote sensing images and digital elevation model data were used in this research. Through integrated computer automatic interpretation and visual interpretation methods, the object-oriented image feature extraction method is applied to extract glacier information. And the images overlying digital elevation model was used to extract the debris- covered glacier terminal in this region. At last, the expert guidance was referenced to revise the glacier outline again. Glacier change data in 1972-2011 were derived from this research, and analyses the glacier variation characteristics and its response to climate change in the past nearly 40 a. The results show that: between 1972 and 2011, the Tailan River watershed′s glaciers had an evident retreat trend, the total area of glaciers was from 435.44 km~2 to 385.38 km~2; shrinking at a rate of 11.50%, with the average annual decrease was approximately 1.25 km~2 and the average single glacier area decrease was 0.31 km~2. Glacier total number decreased from 113 to 109, 10 glaciers were disappeared and three glaciers separated into nine remaining. Other 100 glaciers were presenting decreasing trend. In 2011, according to the results of object-oriented image feature extraction method of glacier distribution and temporal variation, glaciers in this basin are mainly distributed in an elevation of 3 900-4 200 m range, and aspect of the glacier terminal toward the east occupy the vast majority in this basin. By analyzing Aksu and Baicheng weather stations′annual average temperature and precipitation data from 1960 to 2010, the mean annual temperature increased significantly and the annual precipitation also showed an increasing trend. The study concluded that glacier shrinkage is closely related with temperature rising and glacier melting caused by rising temperatures offsets the supply by increased precipitation to some extent.