Accurately predicting hydrological runoff is crucial for water resource allocation and power station scheduling. However, there is no perfect model that can accurately predict future runoff. In this paper, a daily runoff prediction method with a seasonal decomposition-based-deep gated-recurrent-unit (GRU) method (SD-GRU) is proposed. The raw data is preprocessed and then decomposed into trend, seasonal, and residual components using the seasonal decomposition algorithm. The deep GRU model is then used to predict each subcomponent, which is then integrated into the final prediction results. In particular, the hyperparameter optimization algorithm of tree-structured parzen estimators (TPE) is used to optimize the model. Moreover, this paper introduces the single machine learning model (including multiple linear regression (MLR), back propagation (BP), long short-term memory neural network (LSTM) and gate recurrent unit (GRU)) and a combination model (including seasonal decomposition–back propagation (SD-BP), seasonal decomposition–multiple linear regression (SD-MLR), along with seasonal decomposition–long-and-short-term-memory neural network (SD-LSTM), which are used as comparison models to verify the excellent prediction performance of the proposed model. Finally, a case study of the Qingjiang Shuibuya test set, which considers the period 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2019, is conducted. Case studies of the Qingjiang River show the proposed model outperformed the other models in prediction performance. The model achieved a mean absolute error (MAE) index of 38.5, a Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) index of 0.93, and a coefficient of determination (R²) index of 0.7. In addition, compared to the comparison model, the NSE index of the proposed model increased by 19.2%, 19.2%, 16.3%, 16.3%, 2.2%, 2.2%, and 1.1%, when compared to BP, MLR, LSTM, GRU, SD-BP, SD-MLR, SD-LSTM, and SD-GRU, respectively. This research can provide an essential reference for the study of daily runoff prediction models.

Profile soil moisture (PSM), the soil water content in the whole soil layer, directly controls the major processes related to biological interaction, vegetation growth, and runoff generation. Its spatial heterogeneity, which refers to the uneven distribution and complexity in space, influences refined spatial management and decision-making in ecological, agricultural, and hydrological systems. Satellite instruments and hydrological models are two important sources of spatial information on PSM, but there is still a gap in understanding their potential mechanisms that affect spatial heterogeneity. This study is designed to identify the spatial heterogeneity and the driving factors of two PSM datasets; one is preprocessed from a satellite product (European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative, ESA CCI), and the other is simulated from a distributed hydrological model (the DEM-based distributed rainfall-runoff model, DDRM). Three catchments with different climate conditions were chosen as the study area. By considering the scale dependence of spatial heterogeneity, the profile saturation degree (PSD) datasets from different sources (shown as ESA CCI PSD and DDRM PSD, respectively) during 2017 that are matched in terms of spatial scale and physical properties were acquired first based on the calibration data from 2014–2016, and then the spatial heterogeneity of the PSD from different sources was identified by using spatial statistical analysis and the semi-variogram method, followed by the geographic detector method, to investigate the driving factors. The results indicate that (1) ESA CCI and DDRM PSD are similar for seasonal changes and are overall consistent and locally different in terms of the spatial variations in catchment with different climate conditions; (2) based on spatial statistical analysis, the spatial heterogeneity of PSD reduces after spatial rescaling; at the same spatial scale, DDRM PSD shows higher spatial heterogeneity than ESA CCI PSD, and the low-flow period shows higher spatial heterogeneity than the high-flow period; (3) based on the semi-variogram method, both ESA CCI and DDRM PSD show strong spatial heterogeneity in most cases, in which the proportion of C/(C₀ + C) is higher than 0.75, and the spatial data in the low-flow period mostly show larger spatial heterogeneity, in which the proportion is higher than 0.9; the spatial heterogeneity of PSD is higher in the semi-arid catchment; (4) the first three driving factors of the spatial heterogeneity of both ESA CCI and DDRM PSD are DEM, precipitation, and soil type in most cases, contributing more than 50% to spatial heterogeneity; (5) precipitation contributes most to ESA CCI PSD in the low-flow period, and there is no obvious high contribution of precipitation to DDRM PSD. The research provides insights into the spatial heterogeneity of PSM, which helps develop refined modeling and spatial management strategies for soil moisture in ecological, agricultural, and hydrological fields.

The river flow, sediment transport, bed deformation and contaminant transport are strongly coupled under the impacts of climate change and anthropogenic activities. Two-dimensional (2D) mathematical models are practical tools for predicting the morphodynamic processes and contaminant transport while their computational efficiency is a key impediment to simulations featuring large scales of time and space, especially when refined meshes are required for key spot such as hydraulic structures. Therefore, a computationally efficient and fully coupled 2D model for sediment-borne contaminant transport is established under the framework of Finite Volume Method on unstructured meshes in this paper. The computing strategies of local time stepping, parallel computing and high performance clusters are employed, which can speed up the computation and reduce the run time drastically. The model is tested against three experimental cases and one idealized test case, where numerical solutions are in general agreement with the measured data and analytical solution.