Buried underneath the troubled Darfur province in northwestern Sudan is an ancient mega-lake, satellite data shows. Scientists believe there may be an abundance of groundwater still buried there.

The extraction of groundwater could help alleviate the political conflict in Darfur, some experts say, because the fighting in the region stems in part from a battle over water.

Radar waves penetrating the fine-grained sand cover in the hot and dry eastern Sahara revealed buried features of a lake as large as Lake Erie, the tenth largest lake on Earth. Farouk El Baz, director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, says up to a dozen channels of water supplied the lake more than 5,000 years ago.

The discovery may help scientists expand their knowledge of continental climate change and regional paleohydrology. The ancient lake represents evidence of the past rainy conditions that existed in the eastern Sahara.

According to the researchers, mapping the site of the former lake, named the Northern Darfur Megalake, will help with groundwater exploration efforts in the Darfur region, where access to water is essential for refugee survival.

El-Baz says the ancient lake discovered in Darfur is similar to his earlier detection of the "East Uweinat" basin in southwestern Egypt -- where the groundwater rises to 25 meters below the surface -- and which resulted in the drilling of 500 wells to irrigate 100,000 acres of agricultural land.