GTAR: a new ensemble evolutionary autoregressive approach to model dissolved organic carbon

Abstract This article explores the forecasting capabilities of three classic linear and nonlinear autoregressive modeling techniques and proposes a new ensemble evolutionary time series approach to model and forecast daily dynamics in stream dissolved organic carbon (DOC). The model used data from the Oulankajoki River basin, a boreal catchment in Northern Finland. The models that were evolved used both accuracy and parsimony measures including autoregressive (AR), vector autoregressive (VAR), and self-exciting threshold autoregressive (SETAR). The new method, called genetic-based SETAR (GTAR), evolved through the integration of state-of-the-art genetic programming with SETAR. To develop the models, high-resolution DOC concentration and daily streamflow (as the external input for VAR) were measured at the same gauging station throughout the ice free season. The results showed that all the models characterize the DOC dynamics with an acceptable 1-day-ahead forecasting accuracy. Use of the streamflow time series as an exogenous variable did not increase the predictive accuracy of AR models. Moreover, the hybrid GTAR provided the best accuracy for the holdout testing data and proved to be a suitable approach for predicting DOC in boreal conditions.