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This paper presents the results of a study to assess the groundwater quality in an industrial town located in Punjab, India. A total of 99 samples of groundwater were analyzed during the premonsoon and postmonsoon periods of 2018, which revealed the presence of numerous environmentally sensitive elements (ESEs), namely, arsenic (As), aluminum (Al), chromium (Cr), iron (Fe), mercury (Hg), nickel (Ni), selenium (Se), and lead (Pb). Geographic information system (GIS)-based spatial interpolation showed higher contamination levels around the industrial areas and the drainage channel where industrial effluent is generally discharged. Further, groundwater quality was assessed using the heavy metal pollution index (HPI) and the metal index (MI), which indicated poor drinkability of the groundwater. Human exposure to groundwater contaminated with ESEs can pose serious health risks; therefore, noncarcinogenic and carcinogenic health risks due to presence of these elements were also evaluated. Reported health risks to humans from exposure to contaminated groundwater indicate the importance of regular monitoring of groundwater for ESEs vis-a-vis industrial effluent disposal practices.

Palaeochannels are remnants of rivers or stream channels that flowed in the past and have been currently filled or buried by younger fluviatile sediments. There are a number of techniques for detecting palaeochannels with each of them having its own intrinsic advantages and disadvantages. In the present study, apart from applying different approaches, the capabilities, and effectiveness of the approaches to locate and map palaeochannels are compared. Remote sensing-based approaches are comprised of high-resolution satellite datasets and a LiDARderived elevation map for displaying extensive drainage networks of surface feature channels hypothesized to be palaeochannels, palaeorivers, or palaeovalleys. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) transects along with concurrent visual observations are ground-truthing field approaches and has proved to be one of the most appropriate and accurate methods for locating palaeochannels due to their capability to identify subsurface sedimentary stratigraphy innate to palaeochannels. Nevertheless, visual field observations for ground-truthing of prospective palaeochnnels either exhibiting only subtle alterations in desiccation or vegetation are considered a potent field approach. The present review work lays a strong emphasis on delineation and mapping of palaeochannels using remote sensing, geophysical, and sedimentological techniques to meet the sustainable groundwater development goals.

This paper presents a geospatial analysis of the groundwater quality of Ludhiana, Punjab, India. The groundwater samples were collected from 99 locations using grid based sampling procedure and analysed for parameters viz. pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), total hardness (TH), calcium (Ca2+), magnesium (Mg2+), sodium (Na+), potassium (K+), fluoride (F-), chloride (Cl-), nitrate (NO3-), sulphate (SO24-) and bicarbonate (HCO3-). Sampling was done during both pre-monsoon and post-monsoon periods. Water quality index (WQI) was used to represent the groundwater quality of the study area. The WQI coupled with the spatial maps indicated that merely (1%) of the total study area had good groundwater quality and the rest of the study area fell under poor, very poor and unsuitable for drinking purpose. The geographical information system (GIS) based groundwater quality mapping presented in this paper could be a potential tool for groundwater quality management.

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