Most seismogenic faults located within basin or plain with thick soft deposits are characterized by subtle activities.The traditional detection methods,relied mainly on the youngest strata faulted by earthquake,is not always suitable for accurate judging of recent active of faults.Alluvial rivers are very sensitive to surface deformation,so it is a potential tool for detecting the activity of subtle faults by using the sensitivity.This study is focused on the Zhengzhou—Jinan segment of Lower Yellow River.Based on remote sensing images from 1990 to 2013,we extracted the geometric characteristics of river water area of 6 phases,segmented the river, and calculated the river sinuosity of 6 phases and the water surface overlap rate of 5 periods.Combined with regional data,we found that most of abnormal high sinuosity have good spatial correspondences with the subtle faults near,or cross,the Yellow River,but an abnormal sinuosity are related to the level fluctuation by the canal.This correspondence can be explained by surface deformation by recent activities of subtle faults.On the whole,the average overlap rate tends to be stable from upstream to downstream (from lowvalue to high value),and there are some local relatively low values.The latter indicates the instability of local channel and matches with spatial position and activities of subtle faults obtained by sinuosity analysis.This study show that the mean value of the relevant parameters can reflect abnormal river pattern caused by local factors.This not only provides independent evidences for the activity of subtle faults near,or cross,Yellow River,but also a tool for analyzing activities of subtle faults and the stability of river course using abnormal river patterns of remote sensing images.