Simulation of spring flows from a karst aquifer with an artificial neural network

In China, 9·5% of the landmass is karst terrain and of that 47,000 km² is located in semiarid regions. In these regions the karst aquifers feed many large karst springs within basins of thousands of square kilometres. Spring discharges reflect the fluctuation of ground water level and variability of ground water storage in the basins. However, karst aquifers are highly heterogeneous and monitoring data are sparse in these regions. Therefore, for sustainable utilization and conservation of karst ground water it is necessary to simulate the spring flows to acquire better understanding of karst hydrological processes. The purpose of this study is to develop a parsimonious model that accurately simulates spring discharges using an artificial neural network (ANN) model. The karst spring aquifer was treated as a non‐linear input/output system to simulate the response of karst spring flow to precipitation and applied the model to the Niangziguan Springs, located in the east of Shanxi Province, China and a representative of karst springs in a semiarid area. Moreover, the ANN model was compared with a previous time‐lag linear model and it was found that the ANN model performed better. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.