Tiaoxi River,as one of major river systems of Tai lake watershed,is suffering water quality degradation in recent years because of amount of excessive nutrients discharge from point and non-point pollution sources with the urban growth and agricultural activities,therefore,the local government expect a more scientific and efficient management to improve the water quality.This study presents an initial application of total maximum daily(l)oads(TMDL) process in Tiaoxi river to protecting its decreasing water quality through TMDL assessment in various critical conditions scenarios for main streams and tributaries based on numeric water quality standard.Annual TMDLs was estimated in four patterns of flow regimes in order to satisfying multi-objective requirements and then illustrated the seasonal variation of TMDL and selected the appropriate daily load expression for Tiaoxi river.The results indicate that velocity positive impacted the loading capacity,daily TMDL analysis may not be practical way for load allocation and pollution discharge elimination because of insufficient monitoring data and fund support,a non-daily TMDL with medium temporally variable daily load expression would be a better selection for TMDL development in Tiaoxi river.