Robust Monthly Lake Water Level Forecasting Using an Ensemble of Singular Spectrum Analysis Based Deep Learning and Categorical Boosting Models

This study developed an innovative hybrid modelling approach to predict one-month-ahead water levels (LWL (T + 1)) for two major lakes in Türkiye (Eber and Eğirdir), aiming to model complex dynamics of hydrological systems and optimize sustainable water resources management. In the proposed methodological framework, Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) was employed to decompose hydrometeorological time series into sub-components, while Mutual Information (MI) and Partial Autocorrelation Function (PACF) techniques were utilized to determine optimal input variables. The hybrid model architecture, incorporating Deep Neural Networks (DNN), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN), and CatBoost algorithms, was optimized using 70% of the data for training and 30% for testing, and its performance was evaluated through deterministic and probabilistic metrics. The analyses revealed that SSA-based data preprocessing significantly improved the performance of prediction models, and depending on lake characteristics, CNN-based models demonstrated superior performance for Lake Eber, while DNN architecture excelled for Lake Eğirdir. The developed hybrid approach presents an original methodology that can be integrated into decision support systems for water resources management, contributing to the development of sustainable water management strategies and adaptability to similar hydrological systems. © The Author(s) 2026.