Defining nutrient ecoregions for reference nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in rivers from the major South American biomes

Abstract

Delineating reference (i.e., baseline) riverine nutrient concentrations is essential to understand fundamental processes of biogeochemical transport from continents to the ocean, describe ecological conditions, and inform managers of best attainable conditions when attempting to control anthropogenic eutrophication. We used data from 434 Brazilian watersheds representative of major South American biomes covering over half the continental area, to estimate nutrient levels expected prior to anthropogenic development. We used a novel watershed-based approach to describe spatial patterns throughout Brazil and for the entire Amazon basin. This approach considered nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) independently and allowed removal of anthropogenic influences. The approach was useful where there were few unimpacted watersheds and low levels of urbanization had strong effects. We found reference total N concentrations were most closely related to biome, whereas total P levels related to percentage sand in soils in addition to climatic features influencing biomes. There was a wide range of N:P at this coarse level, suggesting P or co-limitation could occur in streams; many areas have intrinsically high background P and relatively low N, suggesting N-limitation of freshwaters could be widespread in South America, favoring nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterial blooms. We provide unique broad-scale analyses of spatial distribution of baseline nutrient levels for tropical and subtropical watersheds across continental scales.

Keywords: Baseline concentration; Nutrient pollution control; Total nitrogen; Total phosphorus; Tropical and subtropical rivers.