Hydrologic losses can play a key role in regulating ecosystem nutrient balances, particularly in regions where baseline nutrient cycles are not augmented by industrial deposition. We used first-order streams to integrate hydrologic losses at the watershed scale across unpolluted old-growth forests in two very different landscapes: New Zealand and the Brazilian Amazon.  New Zealand and the Amazon Basin vary significantly in terms the age of soils and the dominance of N versus P as the nutrient most limiting to primary productivity. They both, however offer the opportunity to study nutrient cycles in forest ecosystems with minimal effects of industrial deposition or pollution.  We employed a matrix approach to resolve how ratios of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), organic and inorganic nitrogen (DON and DIN) and organic and inorganic phosphorus (DOP and DIP) in streamwater varied as a function of landscape differences in climate and geology. In New Zealand, the median streamwater DOC:TDN:TDP molar ratio of 1050:21:1 favored C slightly over N and P when compared to typical temperate forest foliage ratios.  In comparison the median TDN:TDP ratio measured in first-order streams in the Brazilian Amazon was 200:1 which represents a 10 fold increase in relative N concentration compared to the values measured in New Zealand, and a four-fold increase compared to mean values for tropical forest foliage. Ratios of total N to P were slightly more variable  than the concentrations of their component elements in New Zealand streamwaters (4 fold variance between the 1^st and 3^rd quartiles compared to 2 fold for total N and 3 fold for total P) .  Overall multiple regression was able to predict about half the variance in N:P ratios in these streams with climate variables dominating the model.  In contrast streamwater N:P ratios in the Amazon Basin were slightly more constrained than the concentrations of their component species (2.5 fold variance between the 1^st and 3^rd quartiles compared to 3.5  fold and 4.0 fold variance for total N and total P respectively).  These differences are supported by the fact that streamwater N and P concentrations are strongly correlated in the Amazon (R = 0.77, P< 0.001) but not across New Zealand (R =0.19, P = 0.06).