Groundwater monitoring data following 2016-2017 extreme rainfall and floods in the Gaborone catchment, Upper Limpopo basin, Botswana

The dataset contains borehole groundwater levels and physico-chemical parameters for the period May 2017 to June 2018 including; (1) near-monthly measurements of water table depth, groundwater temperature, pH, electrical conductivity and total dissolved solids obtained from manual sampling of 22 boreholes; and (2) higher temporal resolution (5-min time-step) timeseries of water table depth, groundwater temperature and electrical conductivity obtained from automatic dataloggers in 3 of the abovementioned boreholes.

,Manual water table depth measurements during the near-monthly campaigns were done in situ using a standard groundwater dipmeter. Manual groundwater pH, temperature, electrical conductivity and total dissolved solids measurements (Strategy 1) were obtained on pumped grab groundwater samples from borehole taps. Automatic loggers immersed in a selection of three boreholes provided high-temporal resolution (5-min) groundwater level, temperature, electrical conductivity data (Strategy 2). Raw groundwater levels were provided in meter equivalent freshwater head above the logger, later converted in depth in Excel through two sequential processing steps: (1) barometric compensation, from a barometric sensor installed; (2) depth correction using the manual depth measurements (Strategy 1) and applying linear interpolation between measurement dates. Datasets were post-process through removal of obvious measurement errors, including human errors when writing up values on field notebook and anomalous datalogger records associated to sensor extraction from the well.