An Indirect Approach Based on Long Short-Term Memory Networks to Estimate Groundwater Table Depth Anomalies Across Europe With an Application for Drought Analysis

The lack of high-quality continental-scale groundwater table depth observations necessitates developing an indirect method to produce reliable estimation for water table depth anomalies (wtda) over Europe to facilitate European groundwater management under drought conditions. Long Short-Term Memory...

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Autores principales: Yueling Ma, Carsten Montzka, Bagher Bayat, Stefan Kollet
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Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:3d8f4f9e8f674184a787eabaefb4974c2021-11-05T14:25:33ZAn Indirect Approach Based on Long Short-Term Memory Networks to Estimate Groundwater Table Depth Anomalies Across Europe With an Application for Drought Analysis2624-937510.3389/frwa.2021.723548https://doaj.org/article/3d8f4f9e8f674184a787eabaefb4974c2021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frwa.2021.723548/fullhttps://doaj.org/toc/2624-9375The lack of high-quality continental-scale groundwater table depth observations necessitates developing an indirect method to produce reliable estimation for water table depth anomalies (wtda) over Europe to facilitate European groundwater management under drought conditions. Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks are a deep learning technology to exploit long-short-term dependencies in the input-output relationship, which have been observed in the response of groundwater dynamics to atmospheric and land surface processes. Here, we introduced different input variables including precipitation anomalies (pra), which is the most common proxy of wtda, for the networks to arrive at improved wtda estimates at individual pixels over Europe in various experiments. All input and target data involved in this study were obtained from the simulated TSMP-G2A data set. We performed wavelet coherence analysis to gain a comprehensive understanding of the contributions of different input variable combinations to wtda estimates. Based on the different experiments, we derived an indirect method utilizing LSTM networks with pra and soil moisture anomaly (θa) as input, which achieved the optimal network performance. The regional medians of test R2 scores and RMSEs obtained by the method in the areas with wtd ≤ 3.0 m were 76–95% and 0.17–0.30, respectively, constituting a 20–66% increase in median R2 and a 0.19–0.30 decrease in median RMSEs compared to the LSTM networks only with pra as input. Our results show that introducing θa significantly improved the performance of the trained networks to predict wtda, indicating the substantial contribution of θa to explain groundwater anomalies. Also, the European wtda map reproduced by the method had good agreement with that derived from the TSMP-G2A data set with respect to drought severity, successfully detecting ~41% of strong drought events (wtda ≥ 1.5) and ~29% of extreme drought events (wtda ≥ 2) in August 2015. The study emphasizes the importance to combine soil moisture information with precipitation information in quantifying or predicting groundwater anomalies. In the future, the indirect method derived in this study can be transferred to real-time monitoring of groundwater drought at the continental scale using remotely sensed soil moisture and precipitation observations or respective information from weather prediction models.Yueling MaYueling MaCarsten MontzkaBagher BayatStefan KolletStefan KolletFrontiers Media S.A.articledeep learningLong Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networkswavelet coherence analysisgroundwaterdrought monitoringEuropeEnvironmental technology. Sanitary engineeringTD1-1066ENFrontiers in Water, Vol 3 (2021)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic deep learning
Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks
wavelet coherence analysis
groundwater
drought monitoring
Europe
Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering
TD1-1066
spellingShingle deep learning
Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks
wavelet coherence analysis
groundwater
drought monitoring
Europe
Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering
TD1-1066
Yueling Ma
Yueling Ma
Carsten Montzka
Bagher Bayat
Stefan Kollet
Stefan Kollet
An Indirect Approach Based on Long Short-Term Memory Networks to Estimate Groundwater Table Depth Anomalies Across Europe With an Application for Drought Analysis
description The lack of high-quality continental-scale groundwater table depth observations necessitates developing an indirect method to produce reliable estimation for water table depth anomalies (wtda) over Europe to facilitate European groundwater management under drought conditions. Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks are a deep learning technology to exploit long-short-term dependencies in the input-output relationship, which have been observed in the response of groundwater dynamics to atmospheric and land surface processes. Here, we introduced different input variables including precipitation anomalies (pra), which is the most common proxy of wtda, for the networks to arrive at improved wtda estimates at individual pixels over Europe in various experiments. All input and target data involved in this study were obtained from the simulated TSMP-G2A data set. We performed wavelet coherence analysis to gain a comprehensive understanding of the contributions of different input variable combinations to wtda estimates. Based on the different experiments, we derived an indirect method utilizing LSTM networks with pra and soil moisture anomaly (θa) as input, which achieved the optimal network performance. The regional medians of test R2 scores and RMSEs obtained by the method in the areas with wtd ≤ 3.0 m were 76–95% and 0.17–0.30, respectively, constituting a 20–66% increase in median R2 and a 0.19–0.30 decrease in median RMSEs compared to the LSTM networks only with pra as input. Our results show that introducing θa significantly improved the performance of the trained networks to predict wtda, indicating the substantial contribution of θa to explain groundwater anomalies. Also, the European wtda map reproduced by the method had good agreement with that derived from the TSMP-G2A data set with respect to drought severity, successfully detecting ~41% of strong drought events (wtda ≥ 1.5) and ~29% of extreme drought events (wtda ≥ 2) in August 2015. The study emphasizes the importance to combine soil moisture information with precipitation information in quantifying or predicting groundwater anomalies. In the future, the indirect method derived in this study can be transferred to real-time monitoring of groundwater drought at the continental scale using remotely sensed soil moisture and precipitation observations or respective information from weather prediction models.
format article
author Yueling Ma
Yueling Ma
Carsten Montzka
Bagher Bayat
Stefan Kollet
Stefan Kollet
author_facet Yueling Ma
Yueling Ma
Carsten Montzka
Bagher Bayat
Stefan Kollet
Stefan Kollet
author_sort Yueling Ma
title An Indirect Approach Based on Long Short-Term Memory Networks to Estimate Groundwater Table Depth Anomalies Across Europe With an Application for Drought Analysis
title_short An Indirect Approach Based on Long Short-Term Memory Networks to Estimate Groundwater Table Depth Anomalies Across Europe With an Application for Drought Analysis
title_full An Indirect Approach Based on Long Short-Term Memory Networks to Estimate Groundwater Table Depth Anomalies Across Europe With an Application for Drought Analysis
title_fullStr An Indirect Approach Based on Long Short-Term Memory Networks to Estimate Groundwater Table Depth Anomalies Across Europe With an Application for Drought Analysis
title_full_unstemmed An Indirect Approach Based on Long Short-Term Memory Networks to Estimate Groundwater Table Depth Anomalies Across Europe With an Application for Drought Analysis
title_sort indirect approach based on long short-term memory networks to estimate groundwater table depth anomalies across europe with an application for drought analysis
publisher Frontiers Media S.A.
publishDate 2021
url https://doaj.org/article/3d8f4f9e8f674184a787eabaefb4974c
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