Delineation of Groundwater Potential Zones of Coastal Groundwater Basin Using Multi-Criteria Decision Making Technique

Abstract

Delineation of groundwater potential zones (GWPZ) has been performed for a coastal groundwater basin of eastern India. The groundwater potential zone index (GWPZI) map is generated by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) from different influencing features, e.g., Land Use/Land Cover (LU/LC), soil (S), geomorphology (GM), hydrogeology Water Resour Manage (HG), surface geology (SG), recharge rate (RR), drainage density (DD), rainfall (RF), slope (Sl), surface water bodies (SW), lineament density (LD), and Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI). Recharge rate values are estimated from hydrological water balance model. Overlay weighted sum method is used to integrate all thematic feature maps to generate GWPZ map of the study area. Four zones have been identified for the coastal groundwater basin [very good: 36.39 % (273.53 km 2 , good: 43.57 % (327.47 km 2 ), moderate: 18.27 % (137.30 km 2 ), and poor: 1.77 % (13.27 km 2 )]. Areas in north to south-west and south-east direction show very good GWPZ due to the presence of low drainage density. GWPZ map and well yield values show good agreement. Sensitivity analysis reveals that exclusion/absence of rainfall and lineament density increases the poor groundwater potential zones. Omission of hydrogeology, soils, surface geology, and NDVI show maximum increase in good GWPZ. Obtained GWPZ map can be utilized effectively for planning of sustainable agriculture. This analysis demonstrates the potential applicability of the methodology for a general coastal groundwater basin.

Recognition of district-wise groundwater stress zones using the GLDAS-2 catchment land surface model during lean season in the Indian state of West Bengal

“…It is observed that very low crop cultivation in this watershed covered by Purulia district because of this region under high water stress. Thus, excessive groundwater used for irrigation, domestic and various purposes (Mandal et al 2016 ). Identification of groundwater recharge potential zone based on AHP method in the critical Goghat-II block, Hooghly is available in Das et al ( 2019 ).…”

Rapid groundwater potential mapping in humanitarian contexts: improving borehole implementation in basement environments

“…The major drawback of the groundwater potential mapping approaches evaluated by Diaz-Alcaide and Martinez-Santos ( 2019) is the lack of validation of the maps with field data. Overall, groundwater potential maps should be used to optimise field work, rather than as a low-cost substitute for localscale surveys (Abdalla 2012;Mandal et al 2016). The RGWPM methodology presented hereafter is fully aligned with these conclusions, since the objective is to inform local geophysical field investigations for borehole siting.…”

Modelling Small-scale Storage Interventions in Semi-Arid India at the Basin Scale

“…Remote sensing methods [34], an ANN model [34] and the SWAT model [35] have been utilised in various sub-catchments of the Cauvery. At a basin scale, SWAT [36][37][38][39], SCS-CN [40;41] and VIC-MHM [42] have been used to simulate streamflow. However, none of these previous studies are understood to have considered the inclusion of small-scale interventions.…”