Catchment natural driving factors and prediction of baseflow index for Continental United States based on Random forest technique

Abstract Baseflow plays a critical role in maintaining the aquatic environmental health. However, the driving factors and predictions of baseflow have not been rigorously investigated on a large scale, partly preventing hydrologist from deeply understanding runoff generation. To this end, the Lyne–Hollick (LH) digital filter method and the automatic baseflow identification technique (ABIT) were used to estimate the long-term and seasonal baseflow index (BFI) of 619 catchments across Continental United States (CONUS) from 1981 to 2014. Six natural driving factors are selected from the 31 catchment attributes about topography and location, soil, geology, land cover, and climate characteristics. The Random Forest (RF) technique was used to predict the BFI with the selected six driving factors as predictors. Results show that the long-term average BFI was 0.49, and the BFI value was different in four seasons, with the highest value of 0.55 in winter and the lowest value of 0.46 in autumn. The forest fraction, clay proportion and snow fraction were the most powerful factors affecting the long-term average BFI. The RF technique predicts the BFI across the 619 sites in CONUS with a R2 of 0.59 after Leave-One-Location cross-validation, which was more satisfactory than the multiple linear regression method. This study can provide a deep insight into the generation and variation of baseflow and guide the annual baseflow prediction for water resources management.