[Background] Settlement is the most direct expression of people's quality of life, physical and mental health, and the studies on the human settlement load (HSL) in China have been focused on loess hilly region, southern river basin, and southwest China, but very few on the sandy areas yet. Thus we here try to analyze the situation of human settlement in sandy area and measure the level of regional HSL. [Methods] We evaluated the HSL from the production space, ecological space and living space in the sandy area of the northern Yanchi County in a human-oriented way. Firstly, based on introduction to sciences of human settlements, we constructed HSL index system and determined the index weight, in which analytic hierarchy analysis process (AHP) and weight sum were used. Secondly, using the progressive hierarchical merging method, we figured out the same criterion layer of the index with weight sum method and calculated the index of production space load, ecological space load, living space load. Finally, using ArcGIS to overlay HSL of production space, ecological space, and living space layer, we classified the comprehensive index of HSL. [Results] 1) The HSL can be divided into 3 levels: low, which accounted for 32.1%, medium for 39.7%, and high for 28.2%. 2) In the same pattern, the production space can be divided into 3 levels: low, which accounted for 20.1%, medium for 62.5%, and high for 17.4%; and the ecological space into 3 levels: low, which accounted for 34.2%, medium for 43.4% and high for 22.4%; also the living space into 3 levels: low, which accounted for 56%, medium for 10.2% and high for 33.8%; thus, the production space and ecological space were dominated by medium load, while the living space was dominated by low load. [Conclusions] As a whole, the natural environmental quality in the study area was too poor to meet the demand of human habitation. Our analysis of the HSL proved the bearing capacity of the human settlement and indicated that the overall HSL capacity was relatively low. This result suggested that effective measures must be taken to improve the level of HSL in order to ensure the safety of human settlement in this area. Meanwhile, it provides useful guidance for natural resources allocation, desertification governance, soil and water conservation, and optimization of settlement pattern in the sandy area of northern Yanchi.