As an important indicator of vegetation coverage, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) reflects the changing pattern and evolving trend of the environment. In the Loess Plateau, vegetation plays a critical role in soil and water conservation, which strongly affects the achievement of sustainable development goals. The study of the spatial distribution and temporal trends of NDVI is of great practical importance for the planning of soil and water conservation measures, the evaluation of environmental situation. In this study, the NDVI, precipitation and land cover data of the Jing River Basin were collected, the emerging hot spot and cold spot patterns of NDVI were examined, the characteristics of spatial distribution and temporal variation of the NDVI in the basin were analyzed, the impacts on NDVI changes from climate, land cover change have been discussed. The results show that the NDVI in Jing River Basin shows a spatial trend of decreasing from northwest to southeast. The emerging hot spot analysis results show that diminishing cold spot, oscillating hot spot, intensifying hot spot are predominant patterns in the basin. The whole basin shows the statistically significant upward trend of high-value aggregation of NDVI. The temporal trend of NDVI in the basin varies from-0.0171 to 0.0185 per year. The increasing trend of vegetation coverage in the basin is statistically significant. The positive correlation between the NDVI and the precipitation mainly observed upstream of the basin, revealing that the growth of vegetation in the Loess Plateau is more dependent on the water supply from the precipitation. Land cover transition patterns and the land use patterns also impact the spatial-temporal trends of the vegetation coverage in the basin. The study results may helpful for the vegetation restoration, soil and water conservation and sustainable development of the Jing River Basin.