Estimating groundwater use and demand in arid Kenya through assimilation of satellite data and in-situ sensors with machine learning toward drought early action.

Groundwater is an important source of water for people, livestock, and agriculture during drought in the Horn of Africa. In this work, areas of high groundwater use and demand in drought-prone Kenya were identified and forecasted prior to the dry season. Estimates of groundwater use were extended from a sentinel network of 69 in-situ sensored mechanical boreholes to the region with satellite data and a machine learning model. The sensors contributed 756 site-month observations from June 2017 to September 2021 for model building and validation at a density of approximately one sensor per 3700 km

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Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Evan Thomas reports financial support was provided by NASA. Evan Thomas reports financial support was provided by USAID. Evan Thomas reports a relationship with SweetSense Inc. that includes: employment and equity or stocks. Styvers Kathuni reports a relationship with SweetSense Inc. that includes: employment.