An evaluation of a data-driven approach to regional scale surface runoff modelling
Abstract
Modelling surface runoff can be beneficial to operations within many fields, such as agriculture planning, flood and drought risk assessment, and water resource management. In this study, we built a data-driven model that can reproduce monthly surface runoff at a 4-km grid network covering 13 watersheds in the Chesapeake Bay area. We used a random forest algorithm to build the model, where monthly precipitation, temperature, land cover, and topographic data were used as predictors, and monthly surface runoff generated by the SWAT hydrological model was used as the response. A sub-model was developed for each of 12 monthly surface runoff estimates, independent of one another. Accuracy statistics and variable importance measures from the random forest algorithm reveal that precipitation was the most important variable to the model, but including climatological data from multiple months as predictors significantly improves the model performance. Using 3-month climatological, land cover, and DEM derivatives from 40% of the 4-km grids as the training dataset, our model successfully predicted surface runoff for the remaining 60% of the grids (mean R2 (RMSE) for the 12 monthly models is 0.83 (6.60 mm)). The lowest R2 was associated with the model for August, when the surface runoff values are least in a year. In all studied watersheds, the highest predictive errors were found within the watershed with greatest topographic complexity, for which the model tended to underestimate surface runoff. For the other 12 watersheds studied, the data-driven model produced smaller and more spatially consistent predictive errors.
General Audience Abstract
Surface runoff data can be valuable to many fields, such as agriculture planning, water resource management, and flood and drought risk assessment. The traditional approach to acquire the surface runoff data is by simulating hydrological models. However, running such models always requires advanced knowledge to watersheds and computation technologies. In this study, we build a statistical model that can reproduce monthly surface runoff at 4-km grid covering 13 watersheds in Chesapeake Bay area. This model uses publicly accessible climate, land cover, and topographic datasets as predictors, and monthly surface runoff from the SWAT model as the response. We develop 12 monthly models for each month, independent to each other. To test whether the model can be applied to generalize the surface runoff for the entire study area, we use 40% of grid data as the training sample and the remainder as validation. The accuracy statistics, the annual mean R2 and RMSE are 0.83 and 6.60 mm, show our model is capable to accurately reproduce monthly surface runoff of our study area. The statistics for August model are not as satisfying as other months’ models. The possible reason is the surface runoff in August is the lowest among the year, thus there is no enough variation for the algorithm to distinguish the minor difference of the response in model building process. When applying the model to watersheds in steep terrain conditions, we need to pay attention to the results in which the error may be relatively large.
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- Masters Theses [20930]