Disentangling concepts of status, trend, and trajectory

The terms status and trend are ubiquitous in resource monitoring and management settings. To be useful and robust, however, they require precise (mathematical) definitions. It has been my experience that misunderstanding these terms can lead to misapplication of model predictions and to researchers and managers drawing the wrong conclusions from the data. In this post we show how relatively simple, even intuitive, definitions for each of these terms clarifies their intent, and improves the insights provided by models of monitoring data. ...