Apparent quantum yield for photo-production of singlet oxygen in reservoirs and its relation to the water matrix

•Reservoir DOM are mixtures of terrestrial (dominance) and microbial DOM.•Ф1O2 of reservoir surface water ranges from 7.80 × 10−3 to 3.96 × 10−2.•S350–400 significantly correlate to Ф1O2 and is effective for Ф1O2 modeling.•Simple/multiple linear models can estimate Ф1O2 with low RMSE for reservoirs.•Random forest outperform the linear models in the Ф1O2 estimation.