Abstract: The polarization spectrum of the water leaving radiance provides intrinsic information about the composition of the water body from another point of view. In this study, we compared the inversion models developed with the degree of polarization(DOP) spectrum and reflectance spectrum in simple laboratory water body containing only chlorophyll and complex Chaohu water body respectively. The results enlighten that under the complex water conditions ,the DOP spectrum of the chlorophyll have greater capability of weakening the impacts of other water constituents and retrieving the concentrations of chlorophyll than reflectance spectrum in the blue green band；while the difference is not obvious between the DOP and reflectance spectrum in the red band. It shows the independent characteristics of the DOP spectrum with respect to the reflectance spectrum, therefore, implies the potential applications of DOP spectrum method in water quality remote sensing.