Most spatiotemporal studies treat spatial and temporal analysis separately. However, spatial and temporal changes occur simultaneously and are correlated. In this study, we propose a generic framework to simultaneously analyse the spatial and temporal variations of water quality on a catchment scale. Specifically, we analyse the heterogeneity of temporal evolution of water quality data among different sampling sites, and the heterogeneity of spatial distribution of water quality data over different sampling times, respectively, by integrating the techniques of normalized mutual information, dynamic time wrapping and cluster analysis. To bring deep insight into the spatiotemporal variations, inter-change and intra-change are further defined and distinguished, respectively. Taking the Fuxi River catchment as a case study, results indicate that the proposed framework is intuitive and efficient. Beyond this, the generic framework can be expanded for other catchments and various environmental data.

大多数时空研究分别处理时空分析。但是，空间和时间变化同时发生并相互关联。在这项研究中，我们提出了一个通用框架来同时分析流域尺度上水质的时空变化。具体而言，我们通过结合归一化互信息，动态时间包裹和聚类分析技术，分别分析了不同采样点之间水质数据时间演化的异质性，以及不同采样时间的水质数据空间分布的异质性。 。为了深入了解时空变化，分别定义和区分了内部变化和内部变化。以福溪流域为例，结果表明，所提出的框架是直观有效的。除此之外，通用框架还可以扩展到其他流域和各种环境数据。