Delineation of groundwater potential zones in Shahzad watershed, India, using remote sensing and GIS techniques

Abstract

The status of natural resources especially water resources has faced tremendous pressure since water requirements for irrigation have been rising in agricultural countries like India. Groundwater potential mapping (GWPM) is an important aspect of overcoming the problem of water shortage, especially in the region of hard geological formations that are poor in terms of groundwater occurrences. So, it becomes crucial to investigate the water potential zones for planning and developing the watershed. The watershed has predominantly denudational landforms with varying groundwater prospects. Hence, the current study uses geospatial technology to map groundwater potential zones of the Shahzad watershed in the Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh (India). It covers a total area of 1100 km2 in parts of the Bundelkhand region, which has remained socio-economically backward over the decades. Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) tiles of 30-meter resolution were used to generate elevation and slope, whereas conventional map and Landsat 8 OLI FCC were utilized to generate drainage characteristics, hydro-geomorphology, land use/cover, and drainage density. The Geographical Information System (GIS) environment was used for data input, editing, analysis, and integration of various thematic layers. Integrating different themes in GIS led to identifying and demarcating groundwater prospect zones. Groundwater modeling qualitatively categorized the area into four zones viz. poor, poor to moderate, moderate to good, and good to excellent. 78.88% of the total area falls under poor to moderate and moderate to good category. 12.08% lies in the poor category and 9.04% in the good to excellent category. Moreover, the study reveals that the watershed has an elongated shape with low risk of flood discharge, drainage density is moderate and it has permeable to impermeable sub-surface material.