Empirical streamflow simulation for water resource management in data-scarce seasonal watersheds

In the past decade, certain methods for empirical rainfall–runoff modeling have seen extensive development and been proposed as a useful complement to physical hydrologic models, particularly in basins where data to support process-based models is limited. However, the majority of research has focused on a small number of methods, such as artificial neural networks, despite the development of multiple other approaches for non-parametric regression in recent years. Furthermore, this work has generally evaluated model performance based on predictive accuracy alone, while not considering broader objectives such as model interpretability and uncertainty that are important if such methods are to be used for planning and management decisions. In this paper, we use multiple regression and machine-learning approaches to simulate monthly streamflow in five highly-seasonal rivers in the highlands of Ethiopia and compare their performance in terms of predictive accuracy, error structure and bias, model interpretability, and uncertainty when faced with extreme climate conditions. While the relative predictive performance of models differed across basins, data-driven approaches were able to achieve reduced errors when compared to physical models developed for the region. Methods such as random forests and generalized additive models may have advantages in terms of visualization and interpretation of model structure, which can be useful in providing insights into physical watershed function. However, the uncertainty associated with model predictions under climate change should be carefully evaluated, since certain models (especially generalized additive models and multivariate adaptive regression splines) became highly variable when faced with high temperatures.