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

Abstract 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. However, in most developing contexts, the conventional real-time monitoring approach is impractical due to resource constraints or the inaccessibility of remote locations. To overcome these challenges, a citizen science (CS) approach was used as a complement to traditional scientific methods to collect high-frequency data on key hydro-chemical parameters. Over 19 months, local participants measured eight physicochemical parameters and performed periodic samplings to analyze 15 heavy metals in 9 observation wells. Four wells had depths of 0–4 m, indicating their vulnerability to anthropogenic pollution and climatic variation. 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 wells are used for irrigation. Although the CS approach is not yet entirely scientifically robust, the consistency of the data in this study confirmed that, with comprehensive training protocols and continuous oversight, CS serves as a reliable and invaluable complement to traditional research for large-scale data collection and environmental monitoring.