Testing machine learning algorithms for the prediction of depositional
fluxes of the radionuclides 7Be, 210Pb and 40K.
Abstract
The monthly depositional fluxes of three natural radionuclides
($^{7}$Be, $^{210}$Pb and $^{40}$K) were measured
at a Mediterranean coastal station (Malaga, Southern Spain) over a
14-year period from 2005 to 2018, corresponding to 168 monthly samples.
The study of these radionuclides provides valuable information on the
atmospheric air circulation, transportation and erosion processes as
well as a control of the environmental radioactivity. In this work, the
depositional fluxes of these radionuclides are investigated and their
relations with several atmospheric variables, such as air temperature,
pressure or precipitations, have been studied by applying two popular
machine learning methods: Random Forest and Neural Network algorithms.
We extensively test different configurations of these algorithms and
demonstrate their predictive ability for reproducing depositional fluxes
of $^{7}$Be, $^{210}$Pb and $^{40}$K. We use the
Pearson-R correlation coefficient and the mean average error to evaluate
the predictions of the developed models, revealing that the models
derived with Neural Networks achieve slightly better results, in
average, although similar, having into account the uncertainties. The
mean Pearson-R coefficients, evaluated with a k-fold cross-validation
method, are around 0.85 for the three radionuclides using Neural Network
models, while they go down to 0.83, 0.79 and 0.8 for $^{7}$Be,
$^{210}$Pb and $^{40}$K, respectively, for the Random
Forest models. Additionally, applying the Recursive Feature Elimination
technique we determine the variables more correlated with the
depositional fluxes of these radionuclides, which elucidates the main
dependencies of their temporal variability.