This is my tardy assignment

Good research, Jim. I'm a little surprised by the apparent lack of influence of air temperature, since evaporation has to play a role, but maybe temperature is secondary to the state of the vegetation.

In terms of human-induced influences on the watershed, that's true for most Massachusetts rivers (lowering of the watershed via pumping of groundwater, etc.) but I see those as more of a background condition, changing across the years or decades with population growth but not significantly within the course of one year, and certainly not at the frequency of passing storms. So while both natural and human-induced changes influence the river, they exist within very different time frames and can each be studies within its own time frame.