Rapid and timely evaluation of ecological environment change is of great significance to the sustainable development of the region. Owing to climate change and more anthropological intervention, ecological environment is deteriorating in the Yellow River Delta High-Efficiency Ecological Economic Zone (YRDHEEZ). To evaluate ecological environment change of the YRDHEEZ, a comprehensive evaluation index (CEI) was built in this investigation, which integrated vegetation cover (VC), land surface temperature (LST) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration. The experimental results demonstrated that significant regional differences existed in the ecological environment of the YRDHEEZ from 2000 to 2018. The ecological environmental changes in most districts and counties are complex and diverse. More specifically, regions with improvement, moderate improvement and the unchanged ecological environment accounted for more than 70 % of the study area, which suggested that the ecological environment has improved. In order to further verify the validity of the CEI, a field survey was performed, and it found that the result of field survey corresponded with the CEI evaluation, which demonstrated the potential of multi-source remote sensing data to quickly monitor the change of ecological environment quality in the YRDHEEZ.