SY039-11
Improving Water Security in Southeastern Myanmar via Geophysical Capacity Building

Thursday, 10 December 2020: 19:33
Virtual
Serenity (Ren) Fan1, Doug Oldenburg1, Michael Maxwell1, Devin Cowan1, Lindsey Justine Heagy2, Seogi Kang3, Joseph Capriotii1, Melanie Stephens4, Soe Maung5, Yin Yin Aye6 and Zaw Lwin Oo6, (1)University of British Columbia, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Vancouver, BC, Canada, (2)University of California, Berkeley, Statistics, Berkeley, CA, United States, (3)Stanford University, Department of Geophysics, Stanford, CA, United States, (4)Teck Resources, Vancouver, Canada, (5)Department of Rural Development, Mon state, Mawlamyine, Myanmar, (6)Mawlamyine University, Department of Geology, Mawlamyine, Myanmar
Abstract:
During the 2018 dry season, an estimated 24,400 rural people in Mon state, Myanmar suffered directly from water scarcity. Government guidelines for drilling new wells only required that they be offset by sufficient distances from surficial contamination sources. The chosen sites however lacked hydrogeological considerations, resulting in poor drilling success rates. While prior projects lead by the UN and other development agencies performed 1D DC-Resistivity (DCR) surveys in the state, capacity building for water managers was limited.

The goal for our Geoscientists Without Borders projects was to build geophysical capacity for the Myanmar government and academic stakeholders via training, field data acquisition and interpretation, and development of case histories. We adopted a Trainers-of-Trainers (TOT) model in which local stakeholders were given resources and trained so that they could collect and interpret data, continue to perform surveys to find groundwater after the project ended, and teach future generations of local students and engineers. Our project included: (1) donation of a 2D DCR instrument to the Myanmar Department of Rural Development (DRD) engineers; (2) an educational course for 38 students, researchers, and engineers from DRD and Mawlamyine University (MLMU), (3) carrying out DCR surveys in multiple villages, (4) advanced training for a group of 16 TOTs for collecting, inverting and interpreting DCR data, and (5) enhancing sustainability through the use of open-source resources and social media.


Since we have left Myanmar, the TOTs have independently collected field data in 13 villages, processed and interpreted the data, and prioritized locations for drilling wells with viable yields. By equipping key local stakeholders with the knowledge, tools, and experience to perform acquisition, modeling, inversion, and interpretation of 2D DCR data, we improved their capability to delineate aquifers to depths of ~100 m. Based upon both team and DRD-only interpretations of the DCR data, 6 water wells have been drilled as of July 2020, of which 5 are in productive aquifers (>1000 gph). DRD plans to drill in additional surveyed villages in the upcoming year.

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