Ensemble learning of daily river discharge modeling for two watersheds with different climates

Abstract In order to reduce the uncertainties and improve the river discharge modeling accuracy, several topography‐based hydrological models (TOPMODEL), generated by different combinations of parameters, were incorporated into an ensemble learning framework with the boosting method. Both the Baohe...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jingwen Xu, Qun Zhang, Shuang Liu, Shaojie Zhang, Shengjie Jin, Dongyu Li, Xiaobo Wu, Xiaojing Liu, Ting Li, Hao Li
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2020-11-01
Series:Atmospheric Science Letters
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1002/asl.1000
Description
Summary:Abstract In order to reduce the uncertainties and improve the river discharge modeling accuracy, several topography‐based hydrological models (TOPMODEL), generated by different combinations of parameters, were incorporated into an ensemble learning framework with the boosting method. Both the Baohe River Basin (BRB) with humid climate, and the Linyi River Basin (LRB) with semi‐arid climate were chosen for model testing. Observed daily precipitation, pan evaporation and stream flow data were used for model development and testing. Different Nash‐Sutcliffe efficiency coefficients, the coefficient of determination and the Root Mean Square Error were adopted to implement a comprehensive assessment on model performances. Testing results indicated that ensemble learning method could improve the modeling accuracy by comparing with the best single TOPMODEL. During the validation periods, the boosting method could increase the modeling accuracy by 9 and 16% for BRB and LRB, respectively. The ensemble method significantly narrowed the gap of model performances over watersheds with different climatic conditions. Hence, using the ensemble learning to enhance the feasibility of hydrological models for different climatic regions is promising.
ISSN:1530-261X