In the mountainous region of northern Laos, land use is changing drastically as affected by the combined pressure of increasing population and governmental regulation on land-use. It is strongly related to the ecosystem carbon stock as well as to food security and sustainability of forest resources. However, quantitative information at geo-spatial basis is still quite few. The objective this study was the regional assessment of land use and carbon stock capacity under the present and alternative land-use scenarios. We derived the chrono-sequential changes in land use and community age through polygon-based classification of high-resolution and time-series satellite images with the support of field survey. The area of slash-and-burn land use has been increasing consistently to date with the annual rate of 3-5% in the past decade. In average, 77 % was abandoned after a single year cropping. The slash-and-burn area with fallow periods shorter than 4 years was approximately 64 %. The ecosystem carbon stock was assessed based on synthesis of the land use and ground-based measurements of carbon in the soil and fallow vegetations. The chrono-sequential average of ecosystem carbon stock showed a large variation depending on the crop-fallow cycle patterns. Results suggested that the ecosystem carbon stock would continue decreasing under the present land-use condition with short fallow cycle. It was also suggested that the ecosystem carbon stock would be recovered by alternative land-use/ecosystem managements that allow longer fallow periods.