Abstract: Desert riparian vegetation plays a significant role in maintaining ecological stability in extremely arid regions. Understanding the response of desert riparian vegetation to ecological water transport in the arid areas and its changing process is crucial for the formulation of ecological conservation and restoration and water transport policy development. The desert riparian vegetation in the lower reaches of the Tarim River was selected as the research objective. We used multi-source data, including Landsat8 OLI and Sentinel-2A, to construct the vegetation cover data and typical monitoring section vegetation index time-series data. Besides, the temporal and spatial variation characteristics of vegetation in the desert riparian zone from 2013 to 2018 were analyzed. Combined with groundwater level data, we analyzed the response of desert riparian vegetation and ecological water transfer projects. The results showed that the different types of vegetation presented different spatial and temporal changing characteristics after the ecological water transport. The area and spatial distribution of new shrubs were significantly higher than those of other vegetation types. The new Populus euphratica is mainly distributed within 0-1 km and 4.5-6 km of the river channel, and the new shrubs are mainly distributed within 1-4 km of the river channel. The new herbal plants are mainly distributed within 2.5 km of the river channel. Different types of vegetation are affected by ecological water transport modes and monitoring section spaces. The influence of location shows different responses to ecological water transport. At the same time, groundwater levels downstream of the Tarim River is generally uplifted, and vegetation growth is generally improved with the development of ecological water transfer projects.