Prediction of soil temperature using regression and artificial neural network models

In this study, monthly soil temperature was modeled by linear regression (LR), nonlinear regression (NLR) and artificial neural network (ANN) methods. The soil temperature and other meteorological parameters, which have been taken from Adana meteorological station, were observed between the years of 2000 and 2007 by the Turkish State Meteorological Service (TSMS). The soil temperatures were measured at depths of 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 cm below the ground level. A three-layer feed-forward ANN structure was constructed and a back-propagation algorithm was used for the training of ANNs. In order to get a successful simulation, the correlation coefficients between all of the meteorological variables (soil temperature, atmospheric temperature, atmospheric pressure, relative humidity, wind speed, rainfall, global solar radiation and sunshine duration) were calculated taking them two by two. First, all independent variables were split into two time periods such as cold and warm seasons. They were added to the enter regression model. Then, the method of stepwise multiple regression was applied for the selection of the best regression equation (model). Thus, the best independent variables were selected for the LR and NLR models and they were also used in the input layer of the ANN method. Results of these methods were compared to each other. Finally, the ANN method was found to provide better performance than the LR and NLR methods.