Water Resources Assessment of China's Transboundary River Basins Using a Machine Learning Approach

摘要

A comprehensive and reliable assessment of the water resources in China's transboundary river basins is vital for water resources management and peaceful development. In this study, we built machine learning (random forest, gradient boosting, and stacking) and traditional linear models to identify the relation between the runoff coefficient and its influencing factors, including topography, climate, land cover, and soil. The cross-validation results show that the machine learning models greatly outperform the traditional linear model in predicting runoff coefficient. High-resolution (0.1 degrees) runoff coefficient and runoff maps for the China's transboundary river basins riparian countries were produced and compared with other estimates at the country level. The best water resources estimates achieved from the machine learning model are consistent with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations AQUASTAT database (root-mean-square error = 76.97km(3)/year, normalized root-mean-square error = 12%) at the country level. This outperformed two currently available runoff products: the UNH/GRDC Global Composite Runoff Fields and the Global Streamflow Characteristics Dataset. The study also demonstrated that accurate precipitation data can improve runoff and water resources estimation accuracy and that climate and topographic factors have a controlling role in prediction, whereas the influences of land cover and soils are weak. Finally, China's transboundary water resources were calculated and thoroughly assessed at basin and country levels.