Abstract: In order to reveal the impacts of land use patterns on carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in the Yuan River, we collected water samples at 38 sampling points from the mainstream and tributaries in August 2018 (wet season) and January 2019 (dry season), and analyzed carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus (DOC, NO₃^--N, NH₄⁺-N and TP). The watershed was divided into two spatial scales: sub-basin and buffer zones along the river bank (at distances of 100, 200, 300, 400, 1000 and 2000 m). Pearson correlation analysis, redundancy analysis (RDA) and other methods were used to quantify the impacts of land use patterns on the concentrations of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in the mainstream and tributaries. The result showed that: (1) Construction land, farmland, and water area were the main variables influencing the concentrations of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. Construction land had the greatest influence on NH₄⁺-N, DOC and TP, while water area and farmland had greater influence on NO₃^--N and DOC. (2) The land use patterns explained more variations in carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in the mainstream than tributaries. For the mainstream, the explained variations were 47.2% in the wet season and 36.7% in the dry season; for tributaries, the percentages were 23.2% and 26.4%, respectively. (3) In the mainstream, the land use patterns explained more variations in TP, NH₄⁺-N and NO₃^--N concentrations than DOC in wet season, and more variations in DOC than TP, NH₄⁺-N and NO₃^--N in dry season. In tributaries, the land use patterns explained more variations in DOC than TP, NH₄⁺-N and NO₃^--N both in wet and dry season. (4) The impacts of land use patterns on the concentrations of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus were higher in buffer zone than in sub-basin, and higher in mainstream buffer zone than in tributary buffer zone. With the increase of buffer distance, the variations in carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations explained by the land use patterns increased first and then decreased in wet season of mainstream and dry season of tributaries, and increased continuously in dry season of mainstream and wet season of tributaries. The research shows that the key to protecting the water quality of the Yuan River is to strengthen the management of the land use patterns of the buffer zone, especially the control of the point source pollution from the construction land in the mainstream and the non-point source pollution from the farmland in tributaries.