Predicting spatiotemporal variation in runoff in a data-sparse region: analyses of a whole-country model for Panama
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Panama faces seasonal floods and droughts as well as rising freshwater demands ranging from domestic consumption to hydro-power and the operation of the Panama Canal. A process-based hydrological model of the country is a desirable scenario planning tool to complement the existing national water security plan. In Panama as in much of the Global South, sufficient observed data do not exist for all watersheds to calibrate complex hydrological models. Understanding and improving the performance of uncalibrated hydrological models could greatly expand their utility in such regions. In this study, we build and validate an uncalibrated Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model for Panama. We extend the default precipitation submodel and demonstrate the importance of sufficiently accounting for for spatial autocorrelation patterns in precipitation inputs: we found large improvements over the default model, not only for monthly means (NSE = 0.88, from NSE= 0.69 for default SWAT), but especially for standard deviations (NSE = 0.59, from 0.27) and maxima (NSE = 0.51, from 0.21) of discharge across locations and months. We found a strong seasonal trend and regional differences in the spatial autocorrelation of rainfall, suggesting that this phenomenon should not be modeled statically. The resulting precipitation and hydrology models provide important baseline information for Panama, especially on variability and extremes, and could serve as a template for other regions with limited data.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".