The invention relates to a method for estimating vegetation coverage degree in diggings based on a close-up photography mode. The method comprises the following steps of: photographing the diggings to be tested, extracting color features and texture features to form a feature vector according to a particular order, fast classifying vegetation and non-vegetation utilizing a support vector machine classifier, then gathering statistics of vegetation information, and then fast and accurately calculating the vegetation coverage degree for providing reliable basis for surveying the growth status of the vegetation in the diggings. The method also can be used as actual verification of quantitative remote sensing estimation of vegetation coverage algorithm at the same time. The invention also relates to a system for estimating the vegetation coverage degree in the diggings based on the close-up photography mode. The system comprises a feature extraction module, a classifier training module, a vegetation and non-vegetation classifying module and a vegetation coverage degree calculating module.