Assessing Evidence of Phosphorus Concentration Trends in North American Freshwaters

The United States Environmental Protection Agency's National Aquatic Resource Surveys (NARS) documented evidence of widespread, unexplained total phosphorus (TP) concentration increases in lakes and streams across the United States (U.S.) during the 2000-2012 time period. To examine the robustness of evidence for this trend, we used additional monitoring datasets to calculate rates of TP change in thousands of individual waterbodies across the U.S. during the same time frame, and compared them against TP change rates calculated in the same manner for waterbodies that were resurveyed under NARS in different years. For the additional datasets, median rates of TP change were substantially lower than median rates calculated using NARS data. To further examine differences between NARS and non-NARS results in specific waterbodies, we assembled composite datasets for 52 predominantly northern lakes that by chance had been sampled under both NARS and other sampling programs during the same time frame. Using only NARS data, the median calculated TP change rate for this set of lakes was positive and similar to that for the larger set of 401 resurveyed NARS lakes. However, when additional sample data were included, the median calculated TP change rate for these lakes was much lower. Results suggest that increasing TP concentrations in waterbodies may not have been as ubiquitous as suggested. They also illustrate a need to supplement randomized continental-scale monitoring with detailed, site-focused investigations.