Classifying the motion pattern of marine targets is of important significance to promote target surveillance and management efficiency of marine area and to guarantee sea route safety. This paper proposes a moving target classification algorithm model based on channel extraction-segmentation-LCSCA-lp norm minimization. The algorithm firstly analyzes the entire distribution of channels in specific region, and defines the categories of potential ship motion patterns; on this basis, through secondary segmentation processing method, it obtains several line segment trajectories as training sample sets, to improve the accuracy of classification algorithm; then, it further uses the Leastsquares Cubic Spline Curves Approximation (LCSCA) technology to represent the training sample sets, and builds a motion pattern classification sample dictionary; finally, it uses lp norm minimized sparse representation classification model to realize the classification of motion patterns. The verification experiment based on real spatial-temporal trajectory dataset indicates that, this method can effectively realize the motion pattern classification of marine targets, and shows better time performance and classification accuracy than other representative classification methods.