Gully erosion prediction method from geoenvironmental data and supervised machine learning techniques

Predictive models are statistical representations that indicate, based on the historical data analy-sis, the probability of triggering a given phenomenon in the future. In geosciences, such models have been essential to predict the occurrence of adverse phenomena commonly associated with environmental disasters, such as gully erosion. Therefore, this paper presents a method for pro-ducing gully erosion predictive models based on geoenvironmental data and machine learning techniques. The method's effectiveness test was produced in a region of approximately 40,000 km2 in southeastern Brazil and compared the predictive performance of four models designed with different machine learning algorithms. The results demonstrated that the technique is capa-ble of producing models with high predictive ability, with emphasis on the random forest algo-rithm, which, in addition to having achieved the highest levels of accuracy, also produced highly realistic maps for the study area.center dot The method is straightforward and may be applied to predict other geological processes.center dot The application of the method does not require knowledge of programming language.center dot The models produced achieved high predictive performance.