Data for "Random forest-based modeling of stream nutrients at national level in a data-scarce region"

The aim of the study was to model annual total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) concentrations at national level using an ML approach. We used water quality data originating from the Environmental Monitoring Database KESE to train RF models for nutrient concentration prediction in 242 catchments across Estonia. A total of 82 environmental variables were used as predictors in the models. In order to yield the best results, a feature selection strategy along with hyperparameter optimization was performed when building the models. The models are applicable for predicting nutrient loads on an annual level, e.g. for the purpose of reporting national level water quality statistics in regional projects, such as HELCOM. The results showed that this relatively basic RF modeling approach can have a performance similar to process-based models. Moreover, these models are easier to reuse and apply on a larger scale, since the required inputs can be derived from freely available datasets (e.g. satellite imagery)

This repository contains the input data used for building the RF models and the files describing the modeling results.

The description of the files is given in the README.txt file.

Virro, H., Kmoch, A., Vainu, M. and Uuemaa, E., 2022. Random forest-based modeling of stream nutrients at national level in a data-scarce region. Science of The Total Environment, 840, p.156613.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.156613