Heihe River is a typical meandering river located in the Zoige Basin, which is an important tributary of the Yellow River source. Many oxbow lakes developed along Heihe River due to natural cutoffs, which record the cutoff frequencies and old channel morphologies. By processing the remote sensing images of SPOT(1990 and 2000)and Google Earth(2000-2014), 216 oxbow lakes in the mainstream and three tributaries(i. e. , Gequ, Maiqu, and Haqu Rivers)along the river channel were identified and the morphological parameters of the meander belts were further defined and analyzed. The results show that the width of the meander belt along the channel increases with a trend of “quick-slow-quick” and moreover most of the oxbow lakes developed in the middle reach. Due to the impact of sediment deposition in the lower reach, the formation time of Ω-shape oxbow lakes is much less than that of U-shape and C-shape oxbow lakes in the middle and upper reaches. Only two cutoffs occurred during 1990-2013 and a Ω-shape and U-shape oxbow lake gradually formed, indicating that the formation rate of oxbow lakes in the Zoige basin is slow.