Application of nonparametric regression to groundwater level prediction

A new nonparametric regression model is proposed to investigate the relationship between groundwater level fluctuations and streamflow time series observations. The developed nonparametric model does not force the relationship between variables into a rigidly defined class (i.e., linear regression) and is capable of inferring complicated relationships. The results from the analysis indicate that the nonparametric method gives more accurate prediction results than those obtained from parametric regression. A split-sample experiment shows that nonparametric regression gives accurate prediction (extrapolation) results at the validation stage. Key words: nonparametric regression, cross-validation method, groundwater level, streamflow.