The coastal zone is the region most affected by global climate change and human activities. Mainly supported by the time-series high-resolution satellite remote sensing imagery provided by Google Earth, the coastline information of the Pearl River Estuary in 2010-2017 was extracted, the length, types and area of land reclamation in different periods was summarized and analyzed, and the driving mechanism which caused the change was also explored. The results show that: (1) The coastline of the Pearl River Estuary decreased first and then slowly increased in 2010-2017. During 2010-2011 the coastal length reduced slightly, then increased rapidly from 2011-2013, and remains basically unchanged after 2013. (2) Among all five coastline types (bedrock coastline, sandy coastline, muddy coastline, artificial coastline, biogenic coastline) the artificial coastline is the longest, always accounting over 85 % of the total length; the annual change intensity is the highest positive, reaching 0.28 %, showing a stable expansion trend; while the lowest negative change intensity of the muddy is -0.28 %, showing a stable shrinkage trend. (3) The area of land reclamation was increasing, with an average annual change of 0.25 km2. The main reason for the increase is the construction of ports and terminals.