Abstract Rainfall runoff can activate non-point source pollution and generate short-term water-quality anomalies in plateau lake basins, but event-scale multi-indicator responses remain difficult to identify using conventional mean-based assessments. Here, water-quality records available between June 2021 and December 2024 from the Lake Center, Jiangwei, Xiaoguanyi, and Jinhe monitoring sections of Erhai Lake were combined with daily precipitation data to identify 127 rainfall events.
