Anthropogenic land use has significant impact on climate change. Located in the typical East Asian monsoon region, the land-atmosphere interaction in the lower reaches of Yangtze River is even more complicated due to intensive human activities and different types of land use in this region. To better understand these effects on microclimate change, we compare differences in land surface temperature (Ts) for three land types around Nanjing from March to August, 2013, and then quantify the contribution of land surface parameters to these differences (ΔTs) by considering the effects of surface albedo, roughness length, and evaporation respectively. The atmospheric background contribution to ΔTs is also considered based on differences in air temperature (∆Ta). It is found that the cropland cooling effect and urban heat island effect both are induced by significant human activities in this region but they have opposite impacts on Ts. Various changes in surface parameters affect radiation and energy distribution and eventually modify Ts. It is the evaporative cooling effect that plays the most important role in this region. Besides, the background atmospheric circulation is also an indispensable part in land-atmosphere feedback induced by land use change and reinforces both cropland cooling and urban heat island effects.