Comparing the Efficiency of Weight of Evidence, Logistic Regression and Frequency Ratio Methods for Mapping Groundwater Spring Potential in Ghelgazi Watershed, Kordestan Province of Iran

The aim of this study is to prepare the groundwater spring potential map using Weight of Evidence, logistic regression, and frequency ratio methods and comparing their efficiency in Chehlgazi watershed, province of Kurdistan. At first, 17 effective factors in springs occurrence including geology, distance to fault, fault density, elevation, relative permeability of lithological units, slope steepness, slope aspect, plan curvature, profile curvature, precipitation, distance to Stream, drainage Stream density, Sediment Transport Capacity Index (STCI), Stream Power Index, topographic wetness index (TWI) and land use/land cover (LU/LC) were selected. The validation processes of methods were conducted by relative performance characteristic curve (ROC). The area under an ROC curve (AUC) for the weight of evidence, logistic regression and frequency ratio was 85/8%, 79% and 89%, respectively. The results showed that all methods are suitable estimator for mapping the groundwater spring potential in the study area. But the frequency ratio method with the most amounts is the best method to produce and map the groundwater spring potential. Also, validation of the mappings based on the percentage of pilot springs, training springs and all springs showed that the logistic regression, WoE and frequency ratio, with 45, 56 and 45 percent of spring occurrence on the high potential classes respectively, had the highest validation.