Assessment of the interpretability of data mining for the spatial modelling of water erosion using game theory

Abstract This study undertook a comprehensive application of 15 data mining (DM) models, most of which have, thus far, not been commonly used in environmental sciences, to predict land susceptibility to water erosion hazard in the Kahorestan catchment, southern Iran. The DM models were BGLM, BGAM, Cforest, CITree, GAMS, LRSS, NCPQR, PLS, PLSGLM, QR, RLM, SGB, SVM, BCART and BTR. We identified 18 factors usually considered as key controls for water erosion, comprising 10 factors extracted from a digital elevation model (DEM), three indices extracted from Landsat 8 images, a sediment connectivity index (SCI) and three other intrinsic factors. Three indicators consisting of MAE, MBE, RMSE, and…