Spatial prediction on river networks: comparison of top-kriging with regional regression

Top-kriging is a method for estimating stream flow related variables on a river network. Top-kriging treats these variables as emerging from a two-dimensional spatially continuous process in the landscape. The Top-kriging weights are estimated from catchment area (kriging support) accounting for the nested nature of the catchments. We test the Top-kriging method for a comprehensive Austrian dataset of low stream flows. We compare it with a regional regression model where the study domain is subdivided into eight regions. Leave-one-out cross-validation results indicate that Top-kriging outperforms the regional regression on average over the entire study domain. The coefficient of determination (cross-validation) of specific low stream flows is 0.75 and 0.68 for the Top-kriging and regional regression methods, respectively. For locations without upstream data points the two methods are similar because of the external information used in the regression. For locations with upstream data points Top-kriging performs much better than regional regression as it exploits the low flow information of the neighbouring locations.

LAAHA Gregor;  SKOIEN Jon;  BLÖSCHL Günther; 

2013-10-10

WILEY-BLACKWELL

JRC59610

1099-1085,   

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hyp.9578/pdf,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC59610,   

10.1002/hyp.9578,