Accounting for Conceptual Soil Erosion and Sediment Yield Modeling Uncertainty in the APEX Model Using Bayesian Model Averaging
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 20, Issue 6
Abstract
The effects of soil erosion and sedimentation are important for natural resources conservation planning. However, although tremendous resources have been invested in developing more erosion models, the prevailing modeling studies are relying on a single model due to various reasons. The Agricultural Policy Environmental Extender (APEX) provides multiple water erosion equations. This study tests and evaluates the Bayesian model averaging (BMA) scheme on sediment predictions based on four water erosion methods in the APEX model using data from two watersheds. The APEX hydrology and soil erosion and sedimentation components were calibrated simultaneously using the APEX autocalibration tool APEX-CUTE. The BMA scheme is employed to obtain consensus predictions by weighing individual predictions based on their probabilistic likelihood measures. Simulated monthly flow was satisfactory for both the calibration and validation periods, with BMA resulting in Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) values from 0.56 to 0.87 and percent bias (PBIAS) within . No individual soil erosion method in APEX is consistently outperformed other method over the entire sediment yield regimes at both watersheds. The BMA scheme led to improved predictions compared with individual methods and resulted in satisfactory performance statistics (NSE from 0.55 to 0.88) for both the calibration and validation periods based on the optimal solutions. BMA also led to relatively higher Brier scores and narrower prediction bounds than individual methods. The methodology is unrestrictedly general and can be applied to any other combination of models in the environmental sciences.
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Acknowledgments
This study was jointly supported by the International S&T Cooperation Program from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2012DFA91350), the Projects of International Cooperation and Exchanges NSFC (41161140353), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91325302), the first Youth Excellent Talents Program of the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the CPC, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (TD-JC-2013-2), and the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Conservation Effects Assessment Project. The authors also gratefully appreciate the constructive comments from the reviewers.
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Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 20 • Issue 6 • June 2015
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© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 22, 2014
Accepted: Oct 7, 2014
Published online: Nov 14, 2014
Discussion open until: Apr 14, 2015
Published in print: Jun 1, 2015
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