Water Security in Developing Economies: Leveraging Citizen Science for Near-Real-Time Groundwater Assessment

As climate change and human-induced pollution make surface water sources increasingly unreliable, reliance on groundwater is steadily growing, underscoring the critical importance of effective groundwater monitoring to ensure its sustainable use and quality. However, in most places, especially in developing contexts, the conventional approach to real-time monitoring of these vulnerable resources seems impossible due to a lack of resources or inaccessibility to remote locations. To overcome this challenge, a citizen science approach was used as a reliable alternative to collect high-frequency data on key hydrochemical parameters, assessing how competing land uses influence both water quality and supply. Over 19 months, local participants measured eight (8) physicochemical parameters and performed periodic sampling for 15 trace and heavy metals analysis in 9 observation wells. The depth of all hand-dug observation wells ranged from 0.7 to 14.6 m. Four wells (MGW1, BGW2, KGW1, and KGW2) had a depth of 0 - 4 m, indicating that the groundwater level was close to the near-surface water table and was vulnerable to anthropogenic pollution and climatic variations. Although the sodium absorption ratio was medium (12.16), the salinity hazard was high (806.91 μS/cm), indicating a moderate to high risk of soil structure degradation when the high-saline observation wells are used for irrigation. The WQI of the observation wells was 135.62, which falls into the category of ‘poor water’ and signifies that the probability of adverse health effects of multiple contaminants is high. The hazard index from all exposure routes exceeds 1, except for ingestion by adults; hence, the exposed population is likely to experience a non-carcinogenic risk. The lifetime cancer risk of As through ingestion is unacceptable (LCRingestion = 1.14E-02 for children and 2.77E-02 for adults) while cancer risk through dermal exposure is seen as acceptable (LCRdermal = 5.17E-05 for children and 1.53E-04 for adults). The component loading results revealed six principal components. The first principal component (PC1) was mostly dominated by salinity (0.934), total dissolved solids (0.924), electrical conductivity (0.766), lead (0.756), arsenic (0.688), and pH (0.632), which attained high positive loadings. The close agreement between the observed results and scientifically expected outcomes confirms the robustness of the data collected. It further establishes that, with appropriate training and ongoing supervision, citizen scientists can reliably contribute to large-scale environmental monitoring efforts.