The quantitative monitoring and evaluation of the terrestrial ecological environment status helps to understand the changes in ecosystems and their driving factors, and is of great significance for the government to guide regional ecological environment management, achieve ecological protection and socio-economic coordinated development. This study is based on long-term multi-source satellite remote sensing data, and utilizes covariance-based principal component analysis to couple five indicators: greenness, heat, wetness, dryness, and air pollution. A land eco-environment status index evaluation model (LESI) is constructed. Four strategies, including Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test, Biplot, correlation analysis, and cross validation, are used to demonstrate the good stationarity, rationality, comprehensive representativeness and regional adaptability. On this basis, the spatio-temporal characteristics and evolution patterns of the land eco-environment status (LES) in the the Taihu Lake Basin from 2001 to 2021 were assessed, the driving factors of LES changes were discussed, and the contributions of climate change and human activities were quantified. The results show that: (1) The eco-environment quality of the the Taihu Lake Basin is declining first and then stable. The average annual LESI decreases significantly from 0.639 in 2001 to 0.523 in 2009 (-18.2%), and then tends to be stable; (2) The spatial-temporal variation of LESI in Taihu Lake Basin is obviously different. The area where the ecological environment quality remains stable or improved (68.8%) is significantly larger than the area where the ecological environment quality is declining (31.2%), of which Hangzhou and Huzhou have the best eco-environment quality and remain stable. Shanghai and Suzhou are relatively poor and have significant fluctuations; (3) The contributions of temperature, precipitation and night light to LESI are 0.03, 0.19 and 0.78, respectively, indicating that the eco-environment changes in the the Taihu Lake basin in recent 21 years are mainly dominated by human activities, while only some forest mountain areas and wetland areas are affected by climate change. The LESI model established in this study can effectively monitor and quantitatively evaluate changes in the eco-environment, providing scientific support for the government to formulate ecological environment protection policies and promote high-quality development.