Water transparency is widely used as an indicator for lake eutrophication assessment. It reflects the transmition of light in water, and has significant effects not only on light transmitting for the submerged vegetation but also on hydrobioses that live on the existence of light. Water transparency is measured by a Secchi disk(SD) traditionally. It could also be derived remotely by satellite imaging. The Environment and Disaster Monitoring Satellite Constellation(Huan Jing-1A or HJ-1A) series are used for environment monitoring and disaster prediction. With a wide swath, relative high spatial resolution and short revisit period, the image can provide valuable data for aquatic environment monitoring. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS) is another dataset widely used which is suitable for environment monitoring in coastal and large inland water. It has high temporal resolution but low spatial resolution. Combining with in situ measured SDs over the Reservoirs Shitoukoumen and Xinlicheng, Lakes Erlong, Chagan, Yueliang, Dakuli and Talahong sampled in September 2012, we developed and validated two models for estimating SD based on the data of HJ-1A and MODIS daily surface reflectance(MOD09GA, spatial resolution is 500 m), respectively. The appropriate band combinations for the model development were determined by gray relative analysis. The results indicate that the models performed well with both HJ-CCD and MODIS reflectance product(R²=0.639, RMSE=0.248 and MRE=17.1% for HJ-CCD; and R²=0.894, RMSE=0.135 and MRE=9.5% for MOD09GA). Due to its high radiometric resolution, MODIS data performed better than HJ-CCD data. However, when applied the models to lakes that the water transparency is lower than 1 m, the accuracy of HJ-CCD data is acceptable(MRE=13.5%, RMSE=0.066). The advantage in the spatial resolution of HJ-CCD data makes it possible to obtain detailed information on the spatial distribution of the transparency. Compared with the average lake transparencies derived from the two types of data, the results were consistent. This result provided a guideline for the SD monitoring in the lakes at a region-space scale.