“…It is thus of obvious importance to water managers, planners, and scientists to better understand and quantify Niger flows, both at short timescales with near-real-time latency and at longer timescales where discharge responds to climate and land use change (Coulthard and Macklin, 2001;Legesse et al, 2003). At the largest spatial scale, discharge measurements would be required to close terrestrial water budgets, with observed or reanalysis precipitation and evapotranspiration data sets and total water storage variations observed with the GRACE satellite mission (Springer et al, 2017), and to improve estimates of freshwater forcing for understanding ocean dynamics (e.g., Papa et al, 2012). However, the gauge observation network along the Niger is not well developed in many locations due to periodical damage during floods, poor funding for maintenance, and armed conflict or unrest in some regions or because data are not automatically transmitted.…”