Groundwater monitoring and modelling, a crucial challenge in a semi-arid and poorly documented region affected by a high poverty rate (southern Madagascar)

Abstract

Groundwater plays a key role in providing access to drinking water, especially in semi-arid regions where surface water is scarce or absent for much of the year. In the semi-arid region of southern Madagascar, approximately 2,000,000 people face one of the highest poverty rates in the world, making them particularly vulnerable to climatic hazards. As a result, describing and predicting groundwater dynamics is essential to understand and anticipate drought-related humanitarian crises. How to estimate groundwater recharge in a such poorly documented area?Our work consisted of comparing two complementary approaches for estimating groundwater recharge. First, the Groundwater Resource Observatory for Southwestern Madagascar was established in 2014 in difficult logistical settings to monitor piezometric level from 16 boreholes located in various hydrogeological systems. This observatory provides long-term piezometric time series at an hourly time step, which were used to calculate recharge following the Water Table Fluctuation (WTF) Method.Second, a spatial hydrology approach was developed to estimate potential recharge using precipitation and evapotranspiration global products based on remote sensing data. The two approaches were compared, revealing the potential and limits of both. Based on these results, we compare our findings with health outcomes, offering new avenues for research.