For decades, a large area of natural desert grasslands in the middle reaches of the Heihe River in Hexi Corridor of Northwest China has been converted tract by tract into farmland and plantation. However, few researchers have addressed responses of ground arthropod communities to soil salinization in lands different in land-use and management. In this study, five major types of land use 21-year-old planted shrubland without irrigation and fertilization, 28-year-old irrigated Poplar plantation and 33- year-old irrigated Pinus plantation, 27-year-old farmland with irrigation and fertilization, and natural desert grassland were selected for comparison with the last one as control. All the sampling plots, except the last used to be natural desert grassland. Soil salinity and its composition in the surface layer and ground arthropod communities in the plots were observed. Based on the observations, redundancy analysis (RDA) and multiple regression analysis were performed to determine relationships between the distribution of the arthropod community and soil salinization variables. The one-way analysis of variance demonstrated that the conversion of natural grassland to planted shrubland, Poplar plantation, Pinus plantation and farmland significantly reduced abundance of the ground arthropod community, but little affected species richness of the arthropod community. Results of RDA show that soil salinization properties had significant and differential effects on abundance and species richness of the arthropod community. The key factors affecting composition of the ground arthropod community were soil pH, Na⁺, Mg²⁺, Cl^- and SO₄^2- concentrations in the topsoil layer. Abundance of the ground arthropods increased with increasing soil pH and decreased with increasing Mg²⁺ and Cl^- concentrations. The findings suggest that change in soil salinity environment caused by changes in land-use and management is one of the key variables driving evolution of the ground arthropod community.