ABSTRACT
Investigation of traditional Chinese medicine resources is the most important issue of the protection and use of traditional Chinese medicine resources. Real-time monitoring of medicinal plant species and coverage of an area are of great significance to the sustainable development of the medicinal plant species diversity and ecological environment. Flower has unique spectral characteristics. Comparing the vegetative stage through the flowering stage it is easier to identify species. The flowering stage is a critical period for identifying species with remote sensing. Carthamus tinctorius as a traditional Chinese medicine resources in XinJiang region, attracted widespread attention in recent years. In this paper, the hyperspectral data of canopy and other vegetation canopy was measured in 2011. The spectral curve was analyzed, the result indicated that C. tinctorius canopy and the canopy after picking showed absorption peak near 770 nm, the first derivative of red edge spectra and invert-Gaussian model were analyzed, the result indicated that there was significant difference between C. tinctorius canopy and other vegetation canopy. The proposed method is designed to provide initial theoretical foundation for growth condition and physiological parameters of C. tinctorius, and make theoretical groundwork for the distribution and elaborate monitoring of C. tinctorius in future.