Search for: All records

Abstract Finding similarities between model parameters across different catchments has proved to be challenging. Existing approaches struggle due to catchment heterogeneity and non‐linear dynamics. In particular, attempts to correlate catchment attributes with hydrological responses have failed due to interdependencies among variables and consequent equifinality. Machine Learning (ML), particularly the Long Short‐Term Memory (LSTM) approach, has demonstrated strong predictive and spatial regionalization performance. However, understanding the nature of the regionalization relationships remains difficult. This study proposes a novel approach to partially decouple learning the representation of (a) catchment dynamics by using theHydroLSTMarchitecture and (b) spatial regionalization relationships by using aRandom Forest(RF) clustering approach to learn the relationships between the catchment attributes and dynamics. This coupled approach, calledRegional HydroLSTM, learns a representation of “potential streamflow” using a single cell‐state, while the output gate corrects it to correspond to the temporal context of the current hydrologic regime. RF clusters mediate the relationship between catchment attributes and dynamics, allowing identification of spatially consistent hydrological regions, thereby providing insight into the factors driving spatial and temporal hydrological variability. Results suggest that by combining complementary architectures, we can enhance the interpretability of regional machine learning models in hydrology, offering a new perspective on the “catchment classification” problem. We conclude that an improved understanding of the underlying nature of hydrologic systems can be achieved by careful design of ML architectures to target the specific things we are seeking to learn from the data. 

Abstract Hydrogeologic models generally require gridded subsurface properties, however these inputs are often difficult to obtain and highly uncertain. Parametrizing computationally expensive models where extensive calibration is computationally infeasible is a long standing challenge in hydrogeology. Here we present a machine learning framework to address this challenge. We train an inversion model to learn the relationship between water table depth and hydraulic conductivity using a small number of physical simulations. For a 31M grid cell model of the US we demonstrate that the inversion model can produce a reliable K field using only 30 simulations for training. Furthermore, we show that the inversion model captures physically realistic relationships between variables, even for relationships that were not directly trained on. While there are still limitations for out of sample parameters, the general framework presented here provides a promising approach for parametrizing expensive models. 

Abstract Integrated hydrologic models can simulate coupled surface and subsurface processes but are computationally expensive to run at high resolutions over large domains. Here we develop a novel deep learning model to emulate subsurface flows simulated by the integrated ParFlow‐CLM model across the contiguous US. We compare convolutional neural networks like ResNet and UNet run autoregressively against our novel architecture called the Forced SpatioTemporal RNN (FSTR). The FSTR model incorporates separate encoding of initial conditions, static parameters, and meteorological forcings, which are fused in a recurrent loop to produce spatiotemporal predictions of groundwater. We evaluate the model architectures on their ability to reproduce 4D pressure heads, water table depths, and surface soil moisture over the contiguous US at 1 km resolution and daily time steps over the course of a full water year. The FSTR model shows superior performance to the baseline models, producing stable simulations that capture both seasonal and event‐scale dynamics across a wide array of hydroclimatic regimes. The emulators provide over 1,000× speedup compared to the original physical model, which will enable new capabilities like uncertainty quantification and data assimilation for integrated hydrologic modeling that were not previously possible. Our results demonstrate the promise of using specialized deep learning architectures like FSTR for emulating complex process‐based models without sacrificing fidelity. 

Abstract Water table depth (WTD) has a substantial impact on the connection between groundwater dynamics and land surface processes. Due to the scarcity of WTD observations, physically‐based groundwater models are growing in their ability to map WTD at large scales; however, they are still challenged to represent simulated WTD compared to well observations. In this study, we develop a purely data‐driven approach to estimating WTD at continental scale. We apply a random forest (RF) model to estimate WTD over most of the contiguous United States (CONUS) based on available WTD observations. The estimated WTD are in good agreement with well observations, with a Pearson correlation coefficient (r) of 0.96 (0.81 during testing), a Nash‐Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 0.93 (0.65 during testing), and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 6.87 m (15.31 m during testing). The location of each grid cell is rated as the most important feature in estimating WTD over most of the CONUS, which might be a surrogate for spatial information. In addition, the uncertainty of the RF model is quantified using quantile regression forests. High uncertainties are generally associated with locations having a shallow WTD. Our study demonstrates that the RF model can produce reasonable WTD estimates over most of the CONUS, providing an alternative to physics‐based modeling for modeling large‐scale freshwater resources. Since the CONUS covers many different hydrologic regimes, the RF model trained for the CONUS may be transferrable to other regions with a similar hydrologic regime and limited observations. 

The water content in the soil regulates exchanges between soil and atmosphere, impacts plant livelihood, and determines the antecedent condition for several natural hazards. Accurate soil moisture estimates are key to applications such as natural hazard prediction, agriculture, and water management. We explore how to best predict soil moisture at a high resolution in the context of a changing climate. Physics-based hydrological models are promising as they provide distributed soil moisture estimates and allow prediction outside the range of prior observations. This is particularly important considering that the climate is changing, and the available historical records are often too short to capture extreme events. Unfortunately, these models are extremely computationally expensive, which makes their use challenging, especially when dealing with strong uncertainties. These characteristics make them complementary to machine learning approaches, which rely on training data quality/quantity but are typically computationally efficient. We first demonstrate the ability of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to reproduce soil moisture fields simulated by the hydrological model ParFlow-CLM. Then, we show how these two approaches can be successfully combined to predict future droughts not seen in the historical timeseries. We do this by generating additional ParFlow-CLM simulations with altered forcing mimicking future drought scenarios. Comparing the performance of CNN models trained on historical forcing and CNN models trained also on simulations with altered forcing reveals the potential of combining these two approaches. The CNN can not only reproduce the moisture response to a given forcing but also learn and predict the impact of altered forcing. Given the uncertainties in projected climate change, we can create a limited number of representative ParFlow-CLM simulations (ca. 25 min/water year on 9 CPUs for our case study), train our CNNs, and use them to efficiently (seconds/water-year on 1 CPU) predict additional water years/scenarios and improve our understanding of future drought potential. This framework allows users to explore scenarios beyond past observation and tailor the training data to their application of interest (e.g., wet conditions for flooding, dry conditions for drought, etc…). With the trained ML model they can rely on high resolution soil moisture estimates and explore the impact of uncertainties.