Table 2.

Spearman’s correlation coefficients (rho) between environmental parameters and gene abundances and the ratios of target genes across sampling sites (pooled surface + bottom samples).

	Depth	Temperature	Salinity	DO	pH	Chl a	SPM	POC	NH4+	NO2−	NO3−
	(m)	(°C)	(ppt)	(mg/L)		(μg/L)	(g/L)	(g/g)	(μM)	(μM)	(μM)
Abundance
AOA amoA	0.397 **	−0.397 *	0.180	−0.033	−0.012	−0.060	0.601 **	−0.390 **	0.056	0.203	−0.084
AOB amoA	0.562 **	−0.526 **	0.268	−0.111	0.105	−0.230	0.697 **	−0.467 **	−0.087	0.190	−0.320 *
nirK	0.644 **	−0.416 **	0.153	−0.171	0.007	−0.127	0.775 **	−0.586 **	−0.150	0.175	−0.323 *
nirS	0.548 **	−0.395 *	0.128	−0.088	−0.073	−0.132	0.746 **	−0.546 **	−0.136	0.127	−0.178
Ratio
AOB amoA/AOA amoA	0.476 **	−0.414 **	0.286	0.026	0.133	−0.226	0.495 **	−0.342 *	0.056	0.073	−0.339 *
nirK/nirS	0.459 **	−0.269	0.192	−0.304	0.233	−0.122	0.403 **	−0.316 *	−0.145	−0.022	−0.427 **
amoAa/nirb	0.153	−0.491 **	0.345 *	−0.252	0.280	−0.274	0.249	−0.118	0.196	0.176	−0.454 **

^aRepresents the sum of AOB amoA and AOA amoA gene abundances.

^bRepresents the sum of nirK and nirS gene abundances.

Data in bold indicate significant correlations, ^*P < 0.05, ^**P < 0.01.