Abstract
This study assesses the potential of a hierarchical space-time model for
monthly low-flow prediction in Austria. The model decomposes the monthly
low-flows into a mean field and a residual field, where the mean field
estimates the seasonal low-flow regime augmented by a long-term trend
component. We compare four statistical (learning) approaches for the
mean field, and three geostatistical methods for the residual field. All
model combinations are evaluated using a hydrological diverse dataset of
260 stations in Austria, covering summer, winter, and mixed regimes.
Model validation is performed by a nested 10-fold cross-validation. The
best model for monthly low-flow prediction is a combination of a
model-based boosting approach for the mean field and topkriging for the
residual field. This model reaches a median R2 of 0.73. Model
performance is generally higher for stations with a winter regime (best
model yields median R2 of 0.84) than for summer regimes (R2 = 0.7), and
lowest for the mixed regime type (R2 = 0.68). The model appears
especially valuable in headwater catchments, where the performance
increases from 0.56 (median R2 for simple topkriging routine) to 0.67
for the best model combination. The favorable performance results from
the hierarchical model structure that effectively combines different
types of information: average low-flow conditions estimated from climate
and catchment characteristics, and information of adjacent catchments
estimated by spatial correlation. The model is shown to provide robust
estimates not only for moderate events, but also for extreme low-flow
events where predictions are adjusted based on synchronous local
observations.