Prediction of Streamflow Drought Index for Short-Term Hydrological Drought in the Semi-Arid Yesilirmak Basin Using Wavelet Transform and Artificial Intelligence Techniques

Abstract

The prediction of hydrological droughts is vital for surface and ground waters, reservoir levels, hydroelectric power generation, agricultural production, forest fires, climate change, and the survival of living things. This study aimed to forecast 1-month lead-time hydrological droughts in the Yesilirmak basin. For this purpose, support vector regression, Gaussian process regression, regression tree, and ensemble tree models were used alone and in combination with a discrete wavelet transform. Streamflow drought index values were used to determine hydrological droughts. The data were divided into 70% training (1969–1998) and 30% (1999–2011) testing. The performance of the models was evaluated according to various statistical criteria such as mean square error, root means square error, mean absolute error, and determination coefficient. As a result, it was determined that the prediction performance of the models obtained by decomposing into subcomponents with the discrete wavelet transform was optimal. In addition, the most effective drought-predicting model was obtained using the db10 wavelet and MGPR algorithm with mean squared error 0.007, root mean squared error 0.08, mean absolute error 0.04, and coefficient of determination (R2) 0.99 at station 1413. The weakest model was the stand-alone FGSV (RMSE 0.88, RMSE 0.94, MAE 0.76, R2 0.14). Moreover, it was revealed that the db10 main wavelet was more accurate in predicting short-term drought than other wavelets. These results provide essential information to decision-makers and planners to manage hydrological droughts in the Yesilirmak basin.