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The influence of land use patterns on water quality in a river system is scale‐dependent. In this study, a four‐order hierarchical arrangement method was used to select water sampling sites and to delineate sub‐basins in the Daliao River Basin, China. The 20 sub‐basins were classified into four spatial scales that represented four different stream orders. Pearson correlation analysis was used to quantify relationships between land use composition and the river's physical‐chemical variables for all samples collected. This analysis showed that the presence of forest cover was associated with higher water quality at the scale of the whole basin. The scale effects of land use patterns on water quality were then examined using stepwise multiple regression analysis that compared different land use types with water quality variables. The results from this analysis showed that urban areas, as opposed to forest areas, became the most significant contributors of water pollutants when scale effects were considered. The influence of urban land cover on water pollution was significantly higher at larger scales. The lack of a significant regression correlation for the forest land use type at smaller scales revealed that forest located upstream of the Daliao River Basin did not provide a buffer for improved water quality. Further analysis showed that this result could be because of disproportionate spatial distributions for forest and urban land use types. The topographic characteristics of sub‐basins, such as average slope (S) and size (A), were determined to be secondary explanatory variables that affected land use impacts on stream water quality. Areas with steep slopes were associated with increased water oxygenation, whereas areas with flatter slopes were associated with higher concentrations of pollutants. These results are significant because they can provide a better understanding of the appropriate spatial scale required for effective river basin management in the future. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
