I have read some papers in where the authors had performed redundancy analysis (RDA) to identify the relationship between water quality and land use. However, I am confused as to how they are setting up their datasets.
My idea is that one of them is water quality parameters (e.g., pH, TN, TP, ammonia, conductivity, etc.), but what is the other dataset? Percentage of land use/land cover in a specific area (e.g., watershed, research area)?
The way I see it, land use/land cover, is not the explanatory variables. Still, there are limited classes that can be present in an area, and more water quality parameters (e.g., datasets that have measurements for 5 or 6 years).
Please let me know your thoughts and comments.
