Groundwater and Drought Trends in Laos from 2018 to 2022

A -7.63% annual average groundwater decline was observed in Laos from 2018 to 2022. This dataset integrates multi-source satellite remote sensing data with machine learning models to analyze soil moisture, evapotranspiration, water deficits, and drought severity. It was created by ketsana phommavong and last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling groundwater depth based on drought indices using the described Random Forest model.
• Analyzing trends in soil moisture and evapotranspiration dynamics across Laos.
• Mapping the expansion of high-water-deficit areas over the 5-year period.
• Assessing drought severity using integrated satellite remote sensing data.

Strengths

• Integrates data from four distinct satellite remote sensing sources (GRACE, ERA5-Land, TerraClimate, GLDAS-NOAH).
• Covers a 5-year period (2018-2022) marked by climatic variability.
• Reports a specific model performance metric (Random Forest test R² = 0.602).
• Quantifies key findings like a -7.63% annual groundwater decline and high-water-deficit area expansion from 35% to 45%.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is packaged in a RAR archive, which requires specific extraction tools.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Integration of multi-source satellite remote sensing data analyzed with machine learning algorithms (Random Forest, SVM, XGBoost).

Time Range

2018 to 2022

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-21 10:30:00; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Laos