Comparison of Four Different Ordination Methods for Patterning Water Quality of Agricultural Reservoirs

We patterned water quality of agricultural reservoirs according to the differences of six physico-chemical environmental factors (TN, TP, DO, BOD, COD, and SS) using four different ordination methods: Principal Components Analysis (PCA), Detrended Correspondence Analysis (DCA), Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling (NMS), and Isometric Feature Mapping (Isomap). The data set was obtained from the water quality monitoring networks operated by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Ministry of Environments. Chlorophyll-${\alpha}$ displayed the highest correlation with COD, followed by TP, BOD, SS, and TN (p<0.01), while negatively correlated with altitude and bank height of the reservoirs (p<0.01). Although four different ordination methods similarly patterned the reservoirs according to the gradient of nutrient concentration, PCA and NMS appeared to be the most efficient methods to pattern water quality of reservoirs based on the explanation power. Considering variable scores in the ordination map, the concentration of nutrients was positively correlated with Chl-${\alpha}$, while negatively correlated with altitude and bank height. These ordination methods may help to pattern agricultural reservoirs according to their water quality characteristics.