There are likely to be multiple factors contributing to variation in water quality over time - many of which can hide or exaggerate trend components in the data. The most likely sources of variation include: flow variation, seasonal variation, trend and random components. Changes in water quality brought about by human activity will usually be superimposed on natural sources of variation.
Calculating trends in nutrient data
Technical Report
Detecting trends in a water quality data series is not as simple as drawing a 'line of best fit' and measuring the slope.
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Published
23 July 2015
