Research progress on coupling artificial intelligence and eco-environmental models.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been widely used in the eco-environment field, but with shortcomings in revealing the laws of natural science, such as insufficient generalization ability and poor interpretability. In order to overcome these shortages and tap into complementary advantages, coupling AI and eco-environmental models containing physical mechanism has been a new research method with fast development in recent years. We introduced the classifications of AI used in eco-environmental field, outlined its applications, and mainly illustrated the progresses, status and inadequacies for the coupling research. Based on all the summaries, we proposed a new coupling method of physical mechanism and AI for reconstructing mechanism processes, followed by analyses of theoretical significance of partial parameters, feasibility of better generalization and interpretability, as well as prospection of imitating physical mechanism. At the end of the review, we discussed the trend of the coupling method of AI and eco-environment models.