How machine learning can improve predictions and provide insight into fluvial sediment transport in Minnesota

Understanding fluvial sediment transport is critical to addressing many environmental concerns such as exacerbated flooding, degradation of aquatic habitat, excess nutrients, and the economic challenges of restoring aquatic systems. However, fluvial sediment transport is difficult to understand because of the multitude of factors controlling the potential sources, delivery, mechanics, and storage of sediment in aquatic systems. While physical fluvial sediment samples are an integral part of developing solutions for these environmental concerns, samples cannot be collected at every river and time of interest. Therefore, accurate and cost-effective estimates of sediment loading are needed to manage riverine sediment transport at a multitude of scales (Ellison et al. 2016); also needed are methods to estimate sediment transport at sites where little or no physical samples have been collected (Gray & Simes 2008). The application of machine learning (ML) approaches to estimate sediment transport has grown over the past two decades (Afan et al. 2016). ML used in sediment transport research has shown multiple benefits over traditional approaches, such as increased prediction accuracy, the ability to learn complex linear and non-linear relations amongst the dataset and providing the ability to interpret these complex relations with important features used in the model (Cisty et al. 2021; Francke et al. 2008; Khan et al. 2021; Zounemat-Kermani et al. 2020; Cutler et al. 2007).