3.2 SGA Specific Trends
To further understand spatial relationships within the results, the data
for stations within SGA name groups were pooled. There are 8 total SGA
groups (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H) that were used to aggregate the station
results. Correlations between all considered variables were calculated
for each SGA (Table 2). From the correlations describing FC trends with
LULC changes, we saw strong negative correlations between FC trends and
developed land use change in SGA letters C and A despite the weak
positive correlation represented by the coefficient calculated from all
data (i.e., full coast). Negative correlations between FC trends and
wetlands land use change were also observed, being especially strong in
southern SGAs (A, B, C, D). βPrecip and
βFC had a weak positive relationship for most SGAs, with
the exception of SGA C. The correlation between βPrecipand βFC was broken down further for SGA C (Figure S1),
which revealed a strong correlation attributed to negative
βFC values occurring in conjunction with high
βPrecip values. Shore distance had a fairly positive to
fairly negative relationship with βFC moving from the
southern SGAs (A, B, C, D) to the northern SGAs (F, G, H). The
relationship between shore distance and βFC is shown in
Figure S2. Salinity trends were negatively correlated with
βFC along each SGA with the exception of SGA E (Table
2). Due to the ecological importance of salinity when it comes to water
quality and predicting FC concentrations (Souedan et al., 2021; Florini
et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2012), our understanding of salinity
integrating the effects of both land use and precipitation, and the
consistent directionality of the correlation coefficients, we analyzed
this SGA-specific relationship further (Figure 6).