[Objective] Studying the hydrological responses to land use and cover change of Southeast China coast in a small watershed, in order to provide references for the rational allocation and sustainable development of water and soil resources.[Methods] The confluence catchment of Jinjiang Shanmei Reservoir in Fujian Province of China, a place located at the southeast coast of China, was selected to illustrate the effects of land use and cover change(LUCC) on hydrological processes by SWAT model.[Results] (1) From 1995 to 2006, the forest land was mainly converted to garden land and construction land, while farm land was mainly transformed to construction land; (2) In the model, if other conditions were fixed, only data of land use in 2006 was replaced with the corresponding input variable in 1995, the runoff could be outputted as contrast:from 2000 to 2010, the annual runoffs in the whole watershed and also in the tributary drainage area consequently increased; and the averaged runoff during flooding increased, while the runoff during rainless period decreased; (3) The runoff volume in the whole watershed increased with an increased variation as contrast with the previous corresponding value; (4) Garden land, forest land, construction land and paddy field were the main driving factors that caused the regional hydrological changes.[Conclusion] Land use and cover change in the study area were found to result in a runoff trend that are "the flood volume is larger, the runoff yield is smaller". The changes of river runoff was resulted from the combined effects of all types of land use change. This combination effects need to be further studied.