Despite the promise of graph neural networks (GNNs) in hydrological forecasting, existing approaches face critical limitations in capturing dynamic spatiotemporal correlations and integrating physical interpretability. To bridge this gap, we propose a spatial-temporal graph neural network (ST-GNN) that addresses these challenges through three key innovations: dynamic graph construction for adaptive spatial correlation learning, a physically-informed feature enhancement layer for soil moisture and evaporation integration, and a hybrid Graph-LSTM module for synergistic spatiotemporal dependency modeling. The temporal and spatial modules of the spatio-temporal graph neural network exhibit a structural symmetry, which enhances the model’s representational capability. By integrating these components, the model effectively represents rainfall-runoff processes. Experimental results across four Chinese watersheds demonstrate ST-GNN’s superior performance, particularly in semi-arid regions where prediction accuracy shows significant improvement. Compared to the best-performing baseline model (ST-GCN), our ST-GNN achieved an average reduction in root mean square error (RMSE) of 6.5% and an average improvement in the coefficient of determination (R2) of 1.8% across 1–8 h forecast lead times. Notably, in the semi-arid Pingyao watershed, the improvements reached 13.3% in RMSE reduction and 2.5% in R2 enhancement. The model incorporates watershed physical characteristics through a feature fusion layer while employing an adaptive mechanism to capture spatiotemporal dependencies, enabling robust watershed-scale forecasting across diverse hydrological conditions.
Yan et al. (Thu,) studied this question.