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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-2379</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>A Hierarchical Hydrological Knowledge-guided Attention Network for Groundwater Depth Prediction: Insights from Multi-regional Model Interpretation</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Xu</surname>
<given-names>Jing</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0848-2361</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Mo</surname>
<given-names>Yuming</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhu</surname>
<given-names>Senlin</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2803-5419</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Shen</surname>
<given-names>Chengji</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhu</surname>
<given-names>Xinli</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhang</surname>
<given-names>Chenming</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Jiang</surname>
<given-names>Qihao</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff6">
<sup>6</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Li</surname>
<given-names>Ling</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff7">
<sup>7</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>College of Hydraulic Science and Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>School of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Integrated Regulation and Resource Development on Shallow Lakes, Hohai University, Nanjing, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>School of Water Conservancy, North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, Zhengzhou, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>School of Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff6">
<label>6</label>
<addr-line>Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff7">
<label>7</label>
<addr-line>Key Laboratory of Coastal Environment and Resources of Zhejiang Province (KLaCER), School of Engineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>02</day>
<month>06</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>45</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Jing Xu et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2379/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2379/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2379/egusphere-2026-2379.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2379/egusphere-2026-2379.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Given the intensive influence of climate change and anthropogenic activities, accurate groundwater depth (GWD) prediction is essential for sustainable groundwater management. However, existing models struggle to capture spatiotemporal dependencies from complex factors. This study develops a novel Hierarchical Hydrological knowledge-guided Attention Network (HHA-Net) that processes multi-source heterogeneous data through physics-guided encoders, employs adaptive weight allocation and spatiotemporal attention to achieve fourteen-step GWD prediction, and provides insights into groundwater dynamics. Three distinct hydroclimatic and geographical regions in China (128 sites with 233,728 observations) serve as case studies, including the Yanshan-Taihang Mountain Region (YTMR), North China Plain (NCP), and North Jiangsu Plain (NJP). Results show that HHA-Net outperforms baseline models across different sites (natural, agricultural, and urban), with MAPE ranging from 1.02 % to 5.95 % and R&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; ranging from 0.71 to 0.98. The model demonstrates improved performance under droughts but slightly weaker predictive capability during rainfall events, particularly at natural sites in the YTMR. The geographical encoder dominates GWD in the mountainous YTMR (35.6 %), while the human activity encoder and historical encoder control it in the NCP (32.5 %) and the NJP (36.7 %), respectively. The GWD exhibits prolonged memory effects (25 days) and delayed responses to rainfall (7.5 days) in the YTMR, whereas the over-exploited NCP shows rapid decay (3 days) with negative rainfall thresholds (-0.16) and anthropogenic-dominated patterns. The humid NJP demonstrates low-positive thresholds (0.07) and balanced natural-anthropogenic effects. These findings demonstrate the broad applicability of HHA-Net for GWD prediction and response pattern interpretation across diverse regions, providing scientific support for groundwater management.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="45"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province</funding-source>
<award-id>BK20240937; BK20251017</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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