Unraveling Groundwater Stress: A Model Generalizable Across Space and Time Reveals Co-Declining Water Tables and Recharge Across Bangladesh
Saleh Sakib Ahmed, Rashed Uz Zzaman, Saifur Rahman Jony, Faizur Rahman Himel, Afroza Sharmin, A. H. M. Khalequr Rahman, M. Sohel Rahman, Sara Nowreen
原文摘要
Is Bangladesh replenishing the groundwater it depends on? Answering this question remains difficult in Bangladesh and worldwide because sparse in-situ measurements limit observational capabilities, while existing machine-learning approaches struggle to generalize across time and space. To address this bottleneck, we develop a Teacher-Student framework in which a Teacher accurately learns from sparse annual in-situ minimum (R2 = 0.86) and maximum (R2 = 0.96) depth observations to generate dense spatial patterns, and a Student transfers these patterns from time-varying 25-km GLDAS groundwater storage to high-resolution (2-km) depth maps using location-specific features. The Student achieves R2 = 0.93 over 2003-2022 and generalizes across unseen years (Leave-One-Year-Out R2 = 0.93) and locations (Leave-One-District-Out R2 = 0.70), enabling reconstruction without contemporary in-situ measurements. The reconstruction reveals widespread water-table deepening and a national decline in groundwater recharge of 1.10 mm/yr (p < 0.001). Autocorrelation-corrected analysis identifies statistically significant recharge declines across 55.6% of Bangladesh, compared with significant increases across only 4.9%. This imbalance suggests that pumping-induced recharge enhancement, as proposed by the Bengal Water Machine hypothesis, remains localized rather than widespread across Bangladesh. Together, these findings reveal widespread weakening of groundwater replenishment and provide a scalable framework for monitoring groundwater dynamics in data-sparse aquifers globally.
cs.LG · cs.AI