The Three-River Headwater Region is one of the most important ecological function areas in China. In recent years,due to the global warming and effect of frequent human activities,the degradion of grassland ecosystem becomes serious in the Three-river Headwater Region.Based on HJ-1AHSI data,field spectrum data and sample investigation data of different degradation level grasslands,using MLC and SAM methods,this paper studied the classification of different degradation level grasslands in the northeast area of Qingshuihe Town of Chengduo in Three-River Headwater Region.The results showed that the overall classifiction accuracy of SAM method was above 75% based hyperspectral image data and proved the feasibility of the classification approach.It performed effectively discriminating different degradation level grassland with similar vegetation coverage based on hyperspectral image data.SAM performed better than MLC in classification accuracy and fine degree.SAM worked best in distinguishing medium level degradation grassland,while performed weaker in distinguishing other degradation level grassland,which could be improved by introducing auxiliary parameters.