Groundwater and agriculture potential mapping of Mewat District, Haryana, India

Abstract

Groundwater is one of the most valuable natural resources on the planet, sustaining all human activity. It is necessary not just for human survival, but also for a region’s economic and social advancement. Also, agriculture and allied businesses provide a living for more than half of India’s population. Long-term advantages from sustainable agriculture will be necessary to achieve sustainable resource development and management. For successful agricultural and groundwater management, it is vital to assess the groundwater and agricultural potential of an area. This research work may contribute to optimizing the choice of location for future drilling and increase the chances to take water from productive structures which will satisfy the ever-increasing water demand of the local population, especially for agriculture. The current study is an attempt to assess the groundwater and agriculture potential zones in Haryana’s southern region of Mewat district. In order to achieve the objectives, thematic layers such as geology, geomorphology, lineament density, slope, drainage density, soil, and land use/land cover of the research region are prepared for the mapping of groundwater potential zones. For agriculture potential thematic layers such as Digital Elevation Model (DEM), Slope, Rainfall, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Land Surface Temperature (LST), and Soil Moisture Index (SMI) were prepared. To combine all thematic layers, an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) assessment approach is applied. Individual themes and their accompanying categories are awarded a knowledge base weightage ranging from 1 to 5 according to their suitability to hold groundwater and potential for agriculture. All thematic maps are combined into a composite groundwater potential and agriculture potential map of the research region using the weighted overlay function. The groundwater potential map and the agriculture potential map were further subdivided into four categories, ranging from very low to excellent potential zones. It has been found that 69% and 60% of the area has moderate to good groundwater and agriculture potential, respectively, and 20% and 22% of the area has excellent and agriculture potential, respectively. This groundwater and agriculture potential information will help identify acceptable places for water extraction and efficient farming practices.

Geophysical Investigation, Quality, and Sustainability Analysis of Groundwater in Mewat (Nuh) District, Haryana, India

“…As a result, the tube well density is higher in the Taoru block compared to in the Firozpur-Jhirka, Punhana, Nuh, and Nagina blocks. The groundwater potential of the district has been assessed as per GEC-2015 year 2022 [3,26]. The primary source of recharge in the area is rainfall.…”

“…India relies extensively on groundwater across a multitude of sectors, with agriculture being the most crucial. Consequently, there is significant interconnection between groundwater and agriculture in India [3]. Agriculture plays a pivotal role in India's economy, contributing approximately 15-20% to the national GDP.…”

“…The Mewat district in the Indian state of Haryana is representative of a semi-arid area, where the annual precipitation typically falls within the range of 200-500 mm [12], with temporary lakes and a moderate level of groundwater found in alluvial aquifers, faces the problem of integral widely spread groundwater salinity problem [13][14][15][16]. The implementation of groundwater initiatives in regions with limited and unpredictable rainfall is a vital environmental factor to enhance agricultural productivity [3]. This study in Haryana's Mewat district serves multiple significant purposes.…”

Abundance, Characterization, Understanding Water Quality Degradation and Strategies for Pollutant Reduction in Mahanadi River Basin, Odisha

“…Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) is a type of spatial modelling approach, which uses an algorithm to interpolate data geographically or estimate values between observations, employed interpolation [4]. It can also be anticipated that decision-making techniques, such as parameter selection procedures, can be helpful for minimizing uncertainty in phases because the steps of constructing a WQI are prone to subjectivity and ambiguity [5]. Therefore, Criteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation (CRITIC) method is being used in the present work, which demonstrates, a group of correlation-based techniques that rely on analysing the decision matrix to extract the data from the standards used to evaluate the weights of the criteria [6].…”

Evolution of groundwater recharge-discharge balance in the Turpan Basin of China during 1959–2021

“…Groundwater is not only an important component of water resources, but also plays a vital role in resource security (Pradeep and Krishan, 2022), ecological maintenance (Ren et al, 2018), and geological security (Li et al, 2018;Li et al, 2022a). Climate change and human activities have caused changes in groundwater resources in some regions in recent years, including serious problems such as overexploitation and pollution (Chen et al, 2020a;Chen et al, 2020b;Ding et al, 2020), which affect regional water security (Cha et al, 2018), ecological security (Mohallel and Gomaa, 2017;Wei et al, 2023), and geological security (Sheng, 2013).…”