Since the 1980s, natural evolution and intense human activities have superimposed a significant change in the pattern of resources and environment in the Yellow River Basin, which further affects its development and utilization distribution and leads to a lot of problems such as resource shortage, environmental degradation and ecological destruction. From the perspective of earth system science, it is urgent to study the changes of the resources and environment pattern in the Yellow River Basin, identify major resources and environment problems, and put forward solutions, so as to provide decision-making basis for the sustainable development of the Yellow River Basin. With "life community of mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes and grasses" concept and earth system science theory as the instruction, according to the investigation of multisource and multiphase data, this paper analyzes the changes in eleven major resources environmental patterns and regional differentiation in the Yellow River Basin in the last 40 years from 1970 to 2015, including climate, mountainous area and hydrology, identifies the major geological resources and environment problems, and advances some suggestions on the geological work. The results show that the climate of the Yellow River Basin as a whole has an obvious trend of warming and drying, and the phenomenon of warming and humidity appears locally. In recent years, the total area of water and wetland has been decreasing, and the runoff has been decreasing. Some of the main tributaries are seriously polluted, and the aquatic biodiversity has been reduced. In addition, the mountain ecosystem is fragile and gradually restored, the impact of local human activities is intense, the farmland area shows a downward trend, and the farmland production potential in the downstream area is increasing obviously. Moreover, vegetation cover shows a slow increase trend and local degradation, grassland area continues to decrease, grassland ecosystem degradation is obvious, the trend of desertification expansion has been contained, and the overall situation is still grim. In this case, frequent natural disasters, serious water disasters and concentrated geological disasters have led to the formation of such two high incidence areas in southern Gansu as Loess Plateau and Mountains. The continuous rise of urban construction land area leads to the spread of land area from the downstream area to the middle and upper reaches, which shows the cluster distribution characteristics of multiple construction land cores connected by axes. As a result, the center of population distribution further deviates to the east and increases along the central city, trunk stream and traffic lines. The overall GDP shows an upward trend, but manifests a decline from east to west, from the main stream or tributary coast to both sides and from the central city to the surrounding. In order to protect the ecological environment of the Yellow River Basin, promote the high-quality development and solve the diverse geological resources and environmental problems, it is suggested that geological work should be guided by the theory of earth system science to carry out systematic investigation and research on the major geological resources and environmental problems of the Yellow River Basin. Based on the research method of earth system science, we should carry out interdisciplinary cooperation and integrate regional geological survey.