Aquifer Storage and Recovery Feasibility Study With Flowing Fluid Electrical Conductivity Logging in Shallow Aquifers of South Bihar, India

Abstract

Growing dependence on groundwater to fulfill the water demands has led to continuous depletion of groundwater levels and, consequently, poses the maintenance of optimum groundwater and management challenge. The region of South Bihar faces regular drought and flood situations, and due to the excessive pumping, the groundwater resources are declining. Rainwater harvesting has been recommended for the region; however, there are no hydrogeological studies concerning groundwater recharge. Aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) is a managed aquifer recharge technique to store excess water in the aquifer through borewells to meet the high-water demand in the dry season. Therefore, this paper presents the hydrogeological feasibility for possible ASR installations in shallow aquifers of South Bihar with the help of flowing fluid electrical conductivity (FFEC) logging. For modeling, the well logging data of two shallow borewells (16- and 47-m depth) at Rajgir, Nalanda, were used to obtain the transmissivity and thickness of the aquifers. The estimated transmissivities were 804 m2/day with an aquifer thickness of 5 m (in between 11 and 16 m) at Ajatshatru Residential Hall (ARH) well. They were 353 and 1,154 m2/day with the aquifer thicknesses of 6 m (in between 16 and 22 m) and 2 m (in between 45 and 47 m), respectively, at Nalanda University Campus (NUC) well. Despite the acceptable transmissivities at these sites, those aquifers may not be fruitful for the medium- to large-scale (more than 100-m3/day injection rate) ASR as the thickness of the aquifers is relatively small and may not efficiently store and withdraw a large amount of water. However, these aquifers can be adequate for small (up to 20-m3/day injection rate) ASR, for example, groundwater recharge using rooftop water. For medium- to large-scale ASR, deeper aquifers need to be further explored on these sites or aquifers with similar characteristics.

Data sharing in transboundary water management

“…Among the array of technical barriers in improving water resource management, it has become increasingly challenging to extract value from the volumes of data collected in an acceptable amount of time to use (Ibrahim, 2020). Challenges to monitor and predict groundwater and surface water interfaces (Verma and Sharma, 2022), water withdraws (Abraha et al, 2022), and costs of monitoring within the basin (Lowry et al, 2019) are prevalent. Despite difficulties, the types of data recommended by researchers to foster transboundary cooperation are in Table 1 (Burton and Molden, 2005;Gerlak et al, 2014;Paisley and Henshaw, 2014;Thu and Wehn, 2016;Mukuyu et al, 2020;Jahanddideh-Tehrani et al, 2021).…”