A toolbox for visualizing trends in large-scale environmental data

Abstract

Generalized additive models are increasingly used to identify and describe environmental trends. A major advantage of these models, as compared to simpler statistical tools such as linear regression or Mann-Kendall tests, is that they provide estimates of prevailing levels and trend magnitudes at any given point in time instead of an overall measure. For multiple time series, this versatility has to be followed by flexible visualization methods that can summarize and visualize trend analysis results for many series simultaneously. Here, we propose several types of visualizations and illustrate the methods by showing trends in variables related to the recovery from acidification in Swedish riverine data over the period 1988-2017. By this, we show that generalized additive models, together with a small number of selected plots, can comprehensively illustrate prevailing trends and summarize complex information from multiple series.

Keywords

Generalized additive models; Visualization of trends; Surface waters; Acidification; Chemical recovery

Published in

Environmental Modelling and Software
2021, volume: 136, article number: 104949
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD

SLU Authors

• von Brömssen, Claudia

  • Department of Energy and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Betnér, Staffan

  • Department of Energy and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Fölster, Jens

  • Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Eklöf, Karin

  • Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Environmental Sciences

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2020.104949

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/111017