An evaluation of the robustness of canonical kriging for regional analysis of streamflows
The objective of this study was to test the general application and the robustness of canonical kriging, a new approach regional hydrological estimation. The evaluation of the robustness was carried out for the estimation of mean annual streamflow over the continental territory of Haiti, under a tropical climate and under non-optimal conditions of data quality and availability. The performances of canonical kriging were studied using cross validation. The results were compared to those of the linear regression between the mean annual streamflow and the watershed area applied for the same conditions. In general, canonical kriging yields slightly higher performances. It produces less biased estimates (mean relative bias of ‐ 13% against ‐ 20% for regression) with slightly less significant relative errors (54.4% against 59.6% for regression). However, the linear regression produced better estimates for the largest basins although the global performances of canonical krigeage remained acceptable. In addition, considering the very unfavourable conditions in which the method was applied, it was not possible to connect the decrease in the performances of canonical krigeage to a lack in the general application of the approach and/or its robustness.