We assume that no significant changes in land cover occurred during this 5-year period. The catchment size was also included in the analysis to see if size is influencing nutrient loads and concentrations. Furthermore, TNC, TNL, TPC and TPL were excluded in the analysis to isolate climate- and land cover related factors. selleckchem In the factor analysis, no distinction was made between east and west due to the fact that the east contains too few catchments (28) for a reliable estimate of the factor loadings and scores. Therefore, east and west were grouped together. First, all land cover variables, discharge and the catchment size were log-transformed

(temperature and precipitation were already normally distributed) where after the factor loadings and factor scores of the first three factors were extracted from the analysis (a varimax rotation was used for the factor loadings). In the factorial analyses, the first three factors reflecting

the most important relationships among the variables were used in this study. The factor loadings were used to interpret the factors whereas the factor scores were used for Kendall’s rank correlation. Here, the scores and the original variables of TNC, TNL, TPC and TPL were put into the analysis to see if the factors were significantly correlated with the corresponding nutrients. The seasonal Mann–Kendall trend selleck screening library test revealed a positive trend in temperature across almost the entire BSDB with an average increase of 0.04 °C yr−1 over the 31-year record (Table 2). Temperature increase was higher in catchments located at the coast of the Baltic Sea compared to catchments located further away from the Baltic Sea, as shown in Fig. 2a where for each catchment the yearly trend is plotted for the whole BSDB. A positive trend in precipitation was visible in 18% of total eastern area (AE) and in 39% of total western area (AW) with an average

increase of 3.2 mm yr−2 across the entire BSDB ( Table 2). The spatial map of precipitation trends for the BSDB shown in Fig. 2b does not have a clear spatial pattern although most of the trends are located in the more northern catchments. Fig. 2c shows that in general, discharge decreased selleck chemicals llc in the more southern catchments and increased in the more northern catchments with the average rate of increase being 2.8 mm yr−2 and the average rate of decrease being 0.9 mm yr−2. The Mann–Kendall trend test performed on annual time series confirmed significant trends for temperature (east and west) and discharge (west) ( Fig. 1a and c). Note that Fig. 1 shows all catchments while in Table 2 only catchments with significant trends are included. There were clear, significant, differences between east and west (Fig. 3a and b) in terms of the concentrations (TNC and TPC).