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Short-term load forecasting (STLF) plays a vital role in ensuring the safe, efficient, and economical operation of power systems. Accurate load forecasting provides numerous benefits for power suppliers, such as cost reduction, increased reliability, and informed decision-making. However, STLF is a complex task due to various factors, including non-linear trends, multiple seasonality, variable variance, and significant random interruptions in electricity demand time series. To address these challenges, advanced techniques and models are required. This study focuses on the development of an efficient short-term power load forecasting model using the random forest (RF) algorithm. RF combines regression trees through bagging and random subspace techniques to improve prediction accuracy and reduce model variability. The algorithm constructs a forest of trees using bootstrap samples and selects random feature subsets at each node to enhance diversity. Hyperparameters such as the number of trees, minimum sample leaf size, and maximum features for each split are tuned to optimize forecasting results. The proposed model was tested using historical hourly load data from four transformer substations supplying different campus areas of the University of Beira Interior, Portugal. The training data were from January 2018 to December 2021, while the data from 2022 were used for testing. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the RF model in forecasting short-term hourly and one day ahead load and its potential to enhance decision-making processes in smart grid operations.

Road friction has long been recognized as one of the most effective winter road maintenance (WRM) performance measures. It allows WRM personnel to make more informed decisions to improve their services and helps road users make trip-related decisions. In this paper, a machine-learning-based methodological framework was developed to model road friction using inputs from mobile road weather information systems (RWIS) that collect spatially continuous road weather data and road grip. This study also attempts to estimate friction using data from stationary RWIS that are installed far from each other, thereby leaving large areas unmonitored. To fill in the spatial gaps, a kriging interpolator was developed to create a continuous friction map. Slippery road risk levels were classified to provide an overview of road conditions via a risk warning map. The proposed method was evaluated with a selected highway segment in Alberta, Canada. Results show that the models developed herein are highly accurate (93.3%) in estimating friction and identifying dangerous road segments via a color-coded risk map. Given its high performance, the developed model has the potential for large-scale implementation to facilitate more efficient WRM services while also improving the safety and mobility of the traveling public.

In this study, an axisymmetric Czochralski furnace model for the LEC growth of gallium arsenide is presented. We produced 88 datasets through computational fluid dynamics simulations. Among the many parameters that affect crystal growth, a total of 13 input parameters were selected, including the geometry and material parameters of the hot zone (crucible, heaters, radiation shield, and crystal), as well as the process parameters (such as pulling and rotation rates, heating power, etc.). Voronkov criteria (v/Gn), interface deflection, and the average interface temperature gradient were selected as the output parameters. We carried out a correlation analysis between the variables and used decision trees to study the impact of the 13 input variables on the output variables. The results indicated that in the growth of gallium arsenide, the main factor affecting interface deflection and the average interface thermal gradients is the crucible rotation rate. For v/Gn, it is the pulling rate.

In this study, we present the preliminary results of our effort to construct a new high spatial resolution precipitation database (1 km × 1 km) over Greece, on an annual and monthly basis. A variety of spatial parameters (i.e., latitude, longitude, altitude, aspect, distance from water bodies, among others) and ERA5 reanalysis data were used as independent variables in an algorithm combined with the Regression Kriging with a Histogram-Based Gradient-Boosting Regression Tree. The dependent variable in the algorithm was the gauge data covering most of the area studied. Μaps were constructed for the ERA5 reanalysis and the modelled mean precipitation totals on an annual and monthly basis for the 1980–2010 study period. The findings of the analysis show that the applied methodology improves the spatial resolution and distribution of the ERA5 reanalysis precipitation totals over Greece. Furthermore, when comparing the modelled high spatial resolution datasets against ERA5 datasets over the gauge precipitation totals, the model achieved an average R2 improvement of 31.7%, with the largest improvement recorded on an annual basis, while the RMSE decreased by 16.6% on average and more than 40% on an annual basis.

Aerobiological predictive model development is of increasing interest, despite the distribution and variability of data and the limitations of statistical methods making it highly challenging. The use of concentration thresholds and models, where a binary response allows one to establish the occurrence or non-occurrence of the threshold, have been proposed to reduce difficulties. In this paper, we use logistic regression (logit) and regression trees to predict the daily concentration thresholds (low, medium, high, and very high) of six airborne fungal spore taxa (Alternaria, Cladosporium, Agaricus, Ganoderma, Leptosphaeria, and Pleospora) in eight localities in Catalonia (NE Spain) using data from 1995 to 2014. The predictive potential of these models was analyzed through sensitivity and specificity. The models showed similar results regarding the relationship and influence of the meteorological parameters and fungal spores. Ascospores showed a strong relationship with precipitation and basidiospores with minimum temperature, while conidiospores did not indicate any preferences. Sensitivity (true-positive) and specificity (false-positive) presented highly satisfactory validation results for both models in all thresholds, with an average of 73%. However, seeing as logit offers greater precision when attempting to establish the exceedance of a concentration threshold and is easier to apply, it is proposed as the best predictive model.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential of the machine learning technique of decision trees to understand the relationships among furnace design, process parameters, crystal quality, and yield in the case of the Czochralski growth of germanium. The ultimate goal was to provide the range of optimal values of 13 input parameters and the ranking of their importance in relation to their impact on three output parameters relevant to process economy and crystal quality. Training data were provided by CFD modelling. The variety of data was ensured by the Design of Experiments method. The results showed that the process parameters, particularly the pulling rate, had a substantially greater impact on the crystal quality and yield than the design parameters of the furnace hot zone. Of the latter, only the crucible size, the axial position of the side heater, and the material properties of the radiation shield were relevant.

Random forest (RF) is one of the most popular machine learning (ML) models used for both classification and regression problems. As an ensemble model, it demonstrates high predictive accuracy and low variance, while being easy to learn and optimize. In this study, we use RF for short-term load forecasting (STLF), focusing on data representation and training modes. We consider seven methods of defining input patterns and three training modes: local, global and extended global. We also investigate key RF hyperparameters to learn about their optimal settings. The experimental part of the work demonstrates on four STLF problems that our model, in its optimal variant, can outperform both statistical and ML models, providing the most accurate forecasts.

Short-term electric power load forecasting is a critical and essential task for utilities in the electric power industry for proper energy trading, which enables the independent system operator to operate the network without any technical and economical issues. From an electric power distribution system point of view, accurate load forecasting is essential for proper planning and operation. In order to build most robust machine learning model to forecast the load with a good accuracy irrespective of weather condition and type of day, features such as the season, temperature, humidity and day-status are incorporated into the data. In this paper, a machine learning model, namely a regression tree, is used to forecast the active power load an hour and one day ahead. Real-time active power load data to train and test the machine learning models are collected from a 33/11 kV substation located in Telangana State, India. Based on the simulation results, it is observed that the regression tree model is able to forecast the load with less error.

Conservation agriculture, also known as environment-friendly agriculture, is expected to contribute to global climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. To understand the effect of conservation agriculture on farmers and identify those factors, such as farmers’ income change, that might affect practices of conservation agriculture, perceptions, and output, this study examined farmers’ economic and behavioral factors, motivation, and satisfaction. We surveyed 51 farmers who are receiving subsidies to practice conservation agriculture in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. The survey is one of the first prefectural-scale studies that combines unique quantitative analysis of motivation and satisfaction levels (e.g., behaviors) in temporal sequence from the initial to current time to practice conservation agriculture. Our results showed that years of experience, trade with a retail shop, and the farmer’s age can affect income change. With regard to social factors, the satisfaction of their fellowship with other farmers practicing conservation agriculture was also significantly correlated with income change. Simultaneously, this category of satisfaction was difficult to attain compared to the other categories. Thus, greater effort is needed to enhance support networking among conservation farmers. Furthermore, the work presented here also provides the opportunity for future research on temporal and spatial questions surveying economic and behavioral effects with consideration of the heightened policy promotion and entrance of large retail industries.

In this paper, a new tree-structured regression model—the projection pursuit regression tree—is proposed. It combines the projection pursuit classification tree with the projection pursuit regression. The main advantage of the projection pursuit regression tree is exploring the independent variable space in each range of the dependent variable. Additionally, it retains the main properties of the projection pursuit classification tree. The projection pursuit regression tree provides several methods of assigning values to the final node, which enhances predictability. It shows better performance than CART in most cases and sometimes beats random forest with a single tree. This development makes it possible to find a better explainable model with reasonable predictability.

The determination and estimation of elastic behaviour are essential in engineering practise, especially in quarrying, mining, construction, and all engineering professions that perform operations dealing with rock materials. Young’s modulus, or modulus of elasticity, is the most important property describing the deformability of rock material. In this paper, grain-supported carbonates from Croatia are described and their elastic modulus and significant physical and mechanical properties are determined. The analysis of the collected data was performed in the R statistical environment. Estimation models based on multiple linear regression and the regression tree model were created. The methodology of model development and evaluation in R environment is described in detail. According to the more stringent coefficients (RMSECV and adjusted R2) used to evaluate the success of the estimation, simple regression tree models were found to perform well for the preliminary estimation, while more complex models based on Bagging performed very well.

A main challenge for integrating the intermittent photovoltaic (PV) power generation remains the accuracy of day-ahead forecasts and the establishment of robust performing methods. The purpose of this work is to address these technological challenges by evaluating the day-ahead PV production forecasting performance of different machine learning models under different supervised learning regimes and minimal input features. Specifically, the day-ahead forecasting capability of Bayesian neural network (BNN), support vector regression (SVR), and regression tree (RT) models was investigated by employing the same dataset for training and performance verification, thus enabling a valid comparison. The training regime analysis demonstrated that the performance of the investigated models was strongly dependent on the timeframe of the train set, training data sequence, and application of irradiance condition filters. Furthermore, accurate results were obtained utilizing only the measured power output and other calculated parameters for training. Consequently, useful information is provided for establishing a robust day-ahead forecasting methodology that utilizes calculated input parameters and an optimal supervised learning approach. Finally, the obtained results demonstrated that the optimally constructed BNN outperformed all other machine learning models achieving forecasting accuracies lower than 5%.

Wildfire occurrence and spread are affected by atmospheric and land-cover conditions, and therefore meteorological and land-cover parameters can be used in area burned prediction. We apply three forecast methods, a generalized linear model, regression trees, and neural networks (Levenberg–Marquardt backpropagation) to produce monthly wildfire predictions 1 year in advance. The models are trained using the Global Fire Emissions Database version 4 with small fires (GFEDv4s). Continuous 1-year monthly fire predictions from 2011 to 2015 are evaluated with GFEDs data for 10 major fire regions around the globe. The predictions by the neural network method are superior. The 1-year moving predictions have good prediction skills over these regions, especially over the tropics and the southern hemisphere. The temporal refined index of agreement (IOA) between predictions and GFEDv4s regional burned areas are 0.82, 0.82, 0.8, 0.75, and 0.56 for northern and southern Africa, South America, equatorial Asia and Australia, respectively. The spatial refined IOA for 5-year averaged monthly burned area range from 0.69 in low-fire months to 0.86 in high-fire months over South America, 0.3–0.93 over northern Africa, 0.69–0.93 over southern Africa, 0.47–0.85 over equatorial Asia, and 0.53–0.8 over Australia. For fire regions in the northern temperate and boreal regions, the temporal and spatial IOA between predictions and GFEDv4s data in fire seasons are 0.7–0.79 and 0.24–0.83, respectively. The predictions in high-fire months are better than low-fire months. This study illustrates the feasibility of global fire activity outlook forecasts using a neural network model and the method can be applied to quickly assess the potential effects of climate change on wildfires.

This study aimed to (1) investigate the effect of birth and weaning body weight (BW) on performance indicators of grow-finisher pigs and (2) estimate birth and weaning BW cut-off values in order to identify slow growing pigs (SGP). Pigs (n = 144) were classified as SMALL (0.9 ± 0.13 kg) or BIG (1.4 ± 0.20 kg) at birth and re-classified as SMALL (5.4 ± 1.6 kg) or BIG (6.3 ± 1.91 kg) at weaning. Individual BW was recorded bi-weekly, and feed intake was recorded on a daily basis. Average daily gain (ADG) and feed intake, feed conversion ratio (FCR) and days to target slaughter weight (TSW) were calculated. SMALL–SMALL pigs had lower ADG (p < 0.05) requiring 167.1 days (i.e., 14.2 extra days) to TSW (p < 0.05) compared with BIG pigs at birth and/or weaning. However, FCR was similar between groups (p > 0.05). Pigs weaned at

The amount of water allocated to irrigation systems is significantly greater than the amount allocated to other sectors. Thus, irrigation water demand management is at the center of the attention of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Turkey. To plan more effective irrigation systems in agriculture, it is necessary to accurately calculate plant water requirements. In this study, daily reference evapotranspiration (ETo) values were estimated using tree-based regression and deep learning-based gated recurrent unit (GRU) models. For this purpose, 15 input scenarios, consisting of meteorological variables including maximum and minimum temperature, wind speed, maximum and minimum relative humidity, dew point temperature, and sunshine duration, were considered. ETo values calculated according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Penman-Monteith method were considered as model outputs. The results indicate that the random forest model, with a correlation coefficient of 0.9926, is better than the other tree-based models. In addition, the GRU model, with R = 0.9837, presents good performance relative to the other models. In this study, it was found that maximum temperature was more effective in estimating ETo than other variables.

Land cover mapping for large regions often employs satellite images of medium to coarse spatial resolution, which complicates mapping of discrete classes. Class memberships, which estimate the proportion of each class for every pixel, have been suggested as an alternative. This paper compares different strategies of training data allocation for discrete and continuous land cover mapping using classification and regression tree algorithms. In addition to measures of discrete and continuous map accuracy the correct estimation of the area is another important criteria. A subset of the 30 m national land cover dataset of 2006 (NLCD2006) of the United States was used as reference set to classify NADIR BRDF-adjusted surface reflectance time series of MODIS at 900 m spatial resolution. Results show that sampling of heterogeneous pixels and sample allocation according to the expected area of each class is best for classification trees. Regression trees for continuous land cover mapping should be trained with random allocation, and predictions should be normalized with a linear scaling function to correctly estimate the total area. From the tested algorithms random forest classification yields lower errors than boosted trees of C5.0, and Cubist shows higher accuracies than random forest regression.

This work compares the solar power forecasting performance of tree-based methods that include implicit regime-based models to explicit regime separation methods that utilize both unsupervised and supervised machine learning techniques. Previous studies have shown an improvement utilizing a regime-based machine learning approach in a climate with diverse cloud conditions. This study compares the machine learning approaches for solar power prediction at the Shagaya Renewable Energy Park in Kuwait, which is in an arid desert climate characterized by abundant sunshine. The regime-dependent artificial neural network models undergo a comprehensive parameter and hyperparameter tuning analysis to minimize the prediction errors on a test dataset. The final results that compare the different methods are computed on an independent validation dataset. The results show that the tree-based methods, the regression model tree approach, performs better than the explicit regime-dependent approach. These results appear to be a function of the predominantly sunny conditions that limit the ability of an unsupervised technique to separate regimes for which the relationship between the predictors and the predictand would differ for the supervised learning technique.

Short-term traffic flow forecasting is crucial for proactive traffic management and control. One key issue associated with the task is how to properly define and capture the temporal patterns of traffic flow. A feasible solution is to design a multi-regime strategy. In this paper, an effective approach to forecasting short-term traffic flow based on multi-regime modeling and ensemble learning is presented. First, to properly capture the different patterns of traffic flow dynamics, a regime identification model based on probabilistic modeling was developed. Each identified regime represents a specific traffic phase, and was used as the representative feature for the forecasting modeling. Second, a forecasting model built on an ensemble learning strategy was developed, which integrates the forecasts of multiple regression trees. The traffic flow data over 5-min intervals collected from four I-80 freeway segments, in California, USA, was used to evaluate the proposed approach. The experimental results show that the identified regimes are able to well explain the different traffic phases, and play an important role in forecasting. Furthermore, the developed forecasting model outperformed four typical models in terms of root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) on three traffic flow measures.

The estimation of ground sampling distance (GSD) from a remote sensing image enables measurement of the size of an object as well as more accurate segmentation in the image. In this paper, we propose a regression tree convolutional neural network (CNN) for estimating the value of GSD from an input image. The proposed regression tree CNN consists of a feature extraction CNN and a binomial tree layer. The proposed network first extracts features from an input image. Based on the extracted features, it predicts the GSD value that is represented by the floating-point number with the exponent and its mantissa. They are computed by coarse scale classification and finer scale regression, respectively, resulting in improved results. Experimental results with a Google Earth aerial image dataset and a mixed dataset consisting of eight remote sensing image public datasets with different GSDs show that the proposed network reduces the GSD prediction error rate by 25% compared to a baseline network that directly estimates the GSD.

To predict the soil texture fractions, 115 profiles were identified based on the Latin hypercube sampling technique, the horizons were sampled, and the clay, sand, and silt contents (in percentages) of soil samples were measured. Then equal-area quadratic spline depth functions were used to derive clay, sand, and silt contents at five standard soil depths (0−5, 5−15, 15−30, 30−60, and 60−100 cm). Auxiliary variables used in this study include the terrain attributes (derived from a digital elevation model), Landsat 8 image data (acquired in 2015), geomorphological map, and spectrometric data (laboratory data). Artificial neural network (ANN), regression tree (RT), and neuro-fuzzy (ANFIS) models were used to make a correlation between soil data (clay, sand, and silt) and auxiliary variables. The results of this study showed that the ANFIS model was more accurate in the prediction of the three parameters of clay, silt, and sand than ANN and RT. Moreover, the ability of ANFIS model to estimate the soil texture fractions in the surface layers was higher than the lower layers. The mean coefficient of determination (R2) values calculated by 10-fold cross validation suggested the higher prediction performance in the upper depth intervals and higher prediction error in the lower depth intervals (e.g., R2 = 0.91, concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) = 0.90, RMSE = 4.00 g kg−1 for sand of 0−5 cm depth, and R2 = 0.68, CCC = 0.60, RMSE = 8.03 g kg−1 for 60−100 cm depth). The results also showed that the most important auxiliary variables are spectrometric data, multi-resolution, valley-bottom flatness index and wetness index. Overall, it is recommended to use ANFIS models for the digital mapping of soil texture fractions in other arid regions of Iran.

For a better understanding of the nature of complex systems modeling, computer simulations and the analysis of the resulting data are major tools which can be applied. In this paper, we study a statistical modeling problem of data coming from a simulation model that investigates the correctness of autonomous agents’ decisions in learning to cross a cellular automaton-based highway. The goal is a better understanding of cognitive agents’ performance in learning to cross a cellular automaton-based highway with different traffic density. We investigate the effects of parameters’ values of the simulation model (e.g., knowledge base transfer, car creation probability, agents’ fear and desire to cross the highway) and their interactions on cognitive agents’ decisions (i.e., correct crossing decisions, incorrect crossing decisions, correct waiting decisions, and incorrect waiting decisions). We firstly utilize canonical correlation analysis (CCA) to see if all the considered parameters’ values and decision types are significantly statistically correlated, so that no considered dependent variables or independent variables (i.e., decision types and configuration parameters, respectively) can be omitted from the simulation model in potential future studies. After CCA, we then use the regression tree method to explore the effects of model configuration parameters’ values on the agents’ decisions. In particular, we focus on the discussion of the effects of the knowledge base transfer, which is a key factor in the investigation on how accumulated knowledge/information about the agents’ performance in one traffic environment affects the agents’ learning outcomes in another traffic environment. This factor affects the cognitive agents’ decision-making abilities in a major way in a new traffic environment where the cognitive agents start learning from existing accumulated knowledge/information about their performance in an environment with different traffic density. The obtained results provide us with a better understanding of how cognitive agents learn to cross the highway, i.e., how the knowledge base transfer as a factor affects the experimental outcomes. Furthermore, the proposed methodology can become useful in modeling and analyzing data coming from other computer simulation models and can provide an approach for better understanding a factor or treatment effect.

One of the major consequences of the digital revolution has been the increase in the use of electronic devices in health services. Despite their remarkable advantages, though, the use of computers and other visual display terminals for a prolonged time may have negative effects on vision, leading to a greater risk of Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS) among their users. In this study, the importance of ocular and visual symptoms related to CVS was evaluated, and the factors associated with CVS were studied, with the help of an algorithm based on regression trees and genetic algorithms. The performance of this proposed model was also tested to check its ability to predict how prone a worker is to suffering from CVS. The findings of the present research confirm a high prevalence of CVS in healthcare workers, and associate CVS with a longer duration of occupation and higher daily computer usage.

Thermal infrared (TIR) imagery is normally acquired at coarser pixel resolution than that of shortwave sensors on the same satellite platform and often the TIR resolution is not suitable for monitoring crop conditions of individual fields or the impacts of land cover changes that are at significantly finer spatial scales. Consequently, thermal sharpening techniques have been developed to sharpen TIR imagery to shortwave band pixel resolutions, which are often fine enough for field-scale applications. A classic thermal sharpening technique, TsHARP, uses a relationship between land surface temperature (LST) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) developed empirically at the TIR pixel resolution and applied at the NDVI pixel resolution. However, recent studies show that unique relationships between temperature and NDVI may only exist for a limited class of landscapes, with mostly green vegetation and homogeneous air and soil conditions. To extend application of thermal sharpening to more complex conditions, a new data mining sharpener (DMS) technique is developed. The DMS approach builds regression trees between TIR band brightness temperatures and shortwave spectral reflectances based on intrinsic sample characteristics. A comparison of sharpening techniques applied over a rainfed agricultural area in central Iowa, an irrigated agricultural region in the Texas High Plains, and a heterogeneous naturally vegetated landscape in Alaska indicates that the DMS outperformed TsHARP in all cases. The artificial box-like patterns in LST generated by the TsHARP approach are greatly reduced using the DMS scheme, especially for areas containing irrigated crops, water bodies, thin clouds or terrain. While the DMS technique can provide fine resolution TIR imagery, there are limits to the sharpening ratios that can be reasonably implemented. Consequently, sharpening techniques cannot replace actual thermal band imagery at fine resolutions or missions that provide high quality thermal band imagery at high temporal and spatial resolution critical for many agricultural, land use and water resource management applications.

Accurate meteorological forecasting has great importance in different fields. This works introduces a system to obtain precise predictions, which uses regression functions, and collected data using the meteorological stations from the Gran Canaria and South Tenerife airports. The dataset offers information about different phenomena as temperature, wind speed, solar radiation, pressure, moisture, cloudiness, rainfall and meteors. A preprocessing stage has been applied before prediction stage to adapt the collected data. A support vector machine, regression tree, and fit linear model are applied as regression functions. Results has been measured by the mean square error. These results reached an accuracy of 0.07 °C for temperature, 0.56 km/h for wind speed, 7.45 tenths of kJ/m2 for solar radiation and 0.11 mm for precipitation. It shows the robustness of the multiparameter meteorological forecast approach.

The quantitative relationships between the activity of zebrafish ZHE1 enzyme and a series of experimental and physicochemical features of 24 metal oxide nanoparticles were revealed. Vital characteristics of the nanoparticles’ structure were reflected using both experimental and theoretical descriptors. The developed quantitative structure–activity relationship model for nanoparticles (nano-QSAR) was capable of predicting the enzyme inactivation based on four descriptors: the hydrodynamic radius, mass density, the Wigner–Seitz radius, and the covalent index. The nano-QSAR model was calculated using the non-linear regression tree M5P algorithm. The developed model is characterized by high robustness R2bagging = 0.90 and external predictivity Q2EXT = 0.93. This model is in agreement with modern theories of aquatic toxicity. Dissolution and size-dependent characteristics are among the key driving forces for enzyme inactivation. It was proven that ZnO, CuO, Cr2O3, and NiO nanoparticles demonstrated strong inhibitory effects because of their solubility. The proposed approach could be used as a non-experimental alternative to animal testing. Additionally, methods of causal discovery were applied to shed light on the mechanisms and modes of action.

Global change affects vegetation cover and processes through multiple pathways. Long time series of surface land surface properties derived from satellite remote sensing give unique abilities to observe these changes, particularly in areas with complex topography and limited research infrastructure. Here, we focus on Nepal, a biodiversity hotspot where vegetation productivity is limited by moisture availability (dominated by a summer monsoon) at lower elevations and by temperature at high elevations. We analyze the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from 1981 to 2015 semimonthly, at an 8 km spatial resolution. We use a random forest (RF) of regression trees to generate a statistical model of the NDVI as a function of elevation, land use, CO 2 level, temperature, and precipitation. We find that the NDVI increased over the studied period, particularly at low and middle elevations and during the fall (post-monsoon). We infer from the fitted RF model that the NDVI linear trend is primarily due to CO 2 level (or another environmental parameter that is changing quasi-linearly), and not primarily due to temperature or precipitation trends. On the other hand, interannual fluctuation in the NDVI is more correlated with temperature and precipitation. The RF accurately fits the available data and shows promise for estimating trends and testing hypotheses about their causes.

The objective of this study was to develop information mining methodology for drought modeling and predictions using historical records of climate, satellite, environmental, and oceanic data. The classification and regression tree (CART) approach was used for extracting drought episodes at different time-lag prediction intervals. Using the CART approach, a number of successful model trees were constructed, which can easily be interpreted and used by decision makers in their drought management decisions. The regression rules produced by CART were found to have correlation coefficients from 0.71–0.95 in rules-alone modeling. The accuracies of the models were found to be higher in the instance and rules model (0.77–0.96) compared to the rules-alone model. From the experimental analysis, it was concluded that different combinations of the nearest neighbor and committee models significantly increase the performances of CART drought models. For more robust results from the developed methodology, it is recommended that future research focus on selecting relevant attributes for slow-onset drought episode identification and prediction.

This paper presents the methodology and results of two ecological-based net ecosystem production (NEP) regression tree models capable of up scaling measurements made at various flux tower sites throughout the U.S. Great Plains. Separate grassland and cropland NEP regression tree models were trained using various remote sensing data and other biogeophysical data, along with 15 flux towers contributing to the grassland model and 15 flux towers for the cropland model. The models yielded weekly mean daily grassland and cropland NEP maps of the U.S. Great Plains at 250 m resolution for 2000–2008. The grassland and cropland NEP maps were spatially summarized and statistically compared. The results of this study indicate that grassland and cropland ecosystems generally performed as weak net carbon (C) sinks, absorbing more C from the atmosphere than they released from 2000 to 2008. Grasslands demonstrated higher carbon sink potential (139 g C·m−2·year−1) than non-irrigated croplands. A closer look into the weekly time series reveals the C fluctuation through time and space for each land cover type.

Plant phenotyping is a very important topic in agriculture. In this context, data mining strategies may be applied to agricultural data retrieved with new non-invasive devices, with the aim of yielding useful, reliable and objective information. This work presents some applications of machine learning algorithms along with in-field acquired NIR spectral data for plant phenotyping in viticulture, specifically for grapevine variety discrimination and assessment of plant water status. Support vector machine (SVM), rotation forests and M5 trees models were built using NIR spectra acquired in the field directly on the adaxial side of grapevine leaves, with a non-invasive portable spectrophotometer working in the spectral range between 1600 and 2400 nm. The ν-SVM algorithm was used for the training of a model for varietal classification. The classifiers’ performance for the 10 varieties reached, for cross- and external validations, the 88.7% and 92.5% marks, respectively. For water stress assessment, the models developed using the absorbance spectra of six varieties yielded the same determination coefficient for both cross- and external validations (R2 = 0.84; RMSEs of 0.164 and 0.165 MPa, respectively). Furthermore, a variety-specific model trained only with samples of Tempranillo from two different vintages yielded R2 = 0.76 and RMSE of 0.16 MPa for cross-validation and R2 = 0.79, RMSE of 0.17 MPa for external validation. These results show the power of the combined use of data mining and non-invasive NIR sensing for in-field grapevine phenotyping and their usefulness for the wine industry and precision viticulture implementations.

Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency is a global health issue: an association has been demonstrated between vitamin D deficiency and a myriad of acute and chronic illnesses. Data regarding vitamin D status among children hospitalized with non-critical illnesses are scanty. We aimed to: (1) identify profiles of children hospitalized due to non-critical illnesses, using vitamin D levels as the driving outcome; (2) assess the association between patient profiles and length of stay. The study included 854 patients (1−17 years old) who underwent blood tests for detecting vitamin D levels. A regression tree was used to stratify patients. The relationship between vitamin D levels and length of stay was explored using Poisson regression. The regression tree identified three subgroups. Group A (16%): African, North African, Hispanic, and Indian patients. Group B (62%): Caucasian and Asian patients hospitalized for respiratory, metabolic, ill-defined, infective, and genitourinary diseases. Group C (22%): Caucasian and Asian patients hospitalized for digestive, nervous, and musculoskeletal diseases, blood and skin diseases, and injuries. Mean serum vitamin D level (ng/mL) was 13.7 (SD = 9.4) in Group A, 20.5 (10.0) in Group B, and 26.2 (12.6) in Group C. Group B was associated with the highest BMI z-score (p < 0.001) and the highest frequency of preterm births (p = 0.041). Mean length of stay was longer in Group A than in the other groups (p < 0.001) and decreased significantly by 9.8% (p = 0.024) in Group A and by 5% (p = 0.029) in Group B per 10 ng/mL increase in vitamin D level. We identified three subgroups of hospitalized children, defined according to ethnicity and discharge diagnosis, and characterized by increasing vitamin D levels. Vitamin D levels were associated with length of hospitalization.