Abstract: Dissolved organic carbon is an important component of carbon cycle in basin waters. Based on the meteorological data, remote sensing inversion parameters, and Landsat-8 OLI_TIRS satellite digital image in May 2015, we analyzed the correlations between the inversion data of the Landsat water quality model and the parameters of the dissolved organic matter (DOM) in Taihu Lake and clarified the DOM sources and its characteristics. The results showed that water quality parameters (including chlorophyll-a concentration, blue-green algae density, water transparency and turbidity calculated using inversion algorithm based on red, near-infrared and blue bands from the Landsat image) and the normalized suspended matter index were all consistent with the abundance distribution of DOC in Taihu Lake, with DOM as the main autochthonous. Based on the Landsat image, we conducted land-use supervision classification in Taihu sub-basins. The results showed that land use/cover of the basin were important factors affecting characteristics including protein-like substance content and aromaticity. Our results confirmed that remote sensing inversion is an important tool for obtaining data of organic matter in waters. This technique provides feasible way for tracing the sources and characterizing the properties of DOM, as well as showing the influencing degree on DOM with high reliability. It would be an important technology for understanding environmental carbon cycle, and sets a reference for calculation of carbon pool, assessment of water ecological risk, and monitoring of environmental change in the basin.