Long Short-Term Memory Neural Network (LSTM-NN) for Aquifer Level Time
Series Forecasting Using in-Situ Piezometric Observations
Abstract
The application of neural networks (NN) in groundwater (GW) level
prediction has been shown promising by previous works. Yet, previous
works have relied on a variety of inputs, such as air temperature,
pumping rates, precipitation, service population, and others. This work
presents a long short-term memory neural network (LSTM-NN) for GW level
forecasting using only previously observed GW level data as the input
without resorting to any other type of data and information about a
groundwater basin. This work applies the LSTM-NN for short-term and
long-term GW level forecasting in the Edwards aquifer in Texas. The Adam
optimizer is employed for training the LSTM-NN. The performance of the
LSTM-NN was compared with that of a simple NN under 36 different
scenarios with prediction horizons ranging from one day to three months,
and covering several conditions of data availability. This paper’s
results demonstrate the superiority of the LSTM-NN over the simple-NN in
all scenarios and the success of the LSTM-NN in accurate GW level
prediction. The LSTM-NN predicts one lag, up to four lags, and up to 26
lags ahead GW level with an accuracy (R2) of at least
99.89%, 99.00%, and 90.00%, respectively, over a testing period
longer than 17 years of the most recent records. The quality of this
work’s results demonstrates the capacity of machine learning (ML) in
groundwater prediction, and affirms the importance of gathering
high-quality, long-term, GW level data for predicting key groundwater
characteristics useful in sustainable groundwater management.