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Automatic Estimation of Parameter Transfer Functions for Distributed Hydrological Models - Function Space Optimization Applied on the mHM Model
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  • Moritz Feigl,
  • Robert Schweppe,
  • Stephan Thober,
  • Mathew Herrnegger,
  • Luis Samaniego,
  • Karsten Schulz
Moritz Feigl
BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences

Corresponding Author:moritz.feigl@boku.ac.at

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Robert Schweppe
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research UFZ Leipzig
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Stephan Thober
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ
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Mathew Herrnegger
BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
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Luis Samaniego
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ
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Karsten Schulz
BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
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Abstract

FSO is a symbolic regression method that allows for automatic estimation of the structure and parameterization of transfer functions from catchment data. The FSO method transforms the search for an optimal transfer function into a continuous optimization problem using a text generating neural network (variational autoencoder). mHM is a widely applied distributed hydrological model, which uses transfer functions for all its parameters. For this study, we estimate transfer functions for the parameters saturated hydraulic conductivity and field capacity. To avoid the influence of parameter equifinality, the remaining mHM parameter values are optimized simultaneously. The study domain consists of 229 basins, including 7 major basins for Training and 222 smaller basins for validation, distributed across Germany. 5 years of data are used for training und 35 years for validation. By validating the estimated transfer functions in a set of validation basins in a different time period, we can examine the FSO estimated transfer functions influence on model performance, scalability and transferability. We find that transfer functions estimated by FSO lead to a robust performance when being applied in an ungauged setting. The median KGE of the validation basins in the validation time period is 0.73, while the median KGE of the 7 training basins in training time is 0.8. These results look promising, especially since we are only using 5 years of training data, and show the general applicability of FSO for distributed hydrological models.