is catchment level modeling the right approach? #12
Description
There is a rather valid argument that lake growth inside of a endoreheic catchment should not be spatially correlated with processes that occur outside of that region. but i think if we back up, what we really want to know is what is the question we are actually asking? For example:
- what causes catchments to grow or shrink in total lake covered area?
- what causes a lake to grow or shrink given all the factors that influence that lake?
The first question kind of assumes, at least in my mind that if lakes are changing within a catchment they are all doing so for the same reason. However the second question does not have this assumption, however it has more computational complexity (e.g., catchments are easy to identify since hydrobasins already exists, but i think we would have to identify all the lakes in the dataset based on pixel distribution of water coverage. then model those. this then would take a lot longer in the bayesian model to compute but i dont think it woudl be the end of teh world.