Land-Use Impact and Nitrate Analysis to Validate DRASTIC Vulnerability Maps Using a GIS Platform of Pablillo River Basin, Linares, N.L., Mexico

Abstract

Preventive management of groundwater resources and their protection against pollution is one of the major challenges of our society. Groundwater systems are related with the surficial processes like territorial administration that is one of the most important tasks into the human development, because it involves serious problems to define the spatial medium, the industrial site-selection and the land-use allocation. Land-use and anthropogenic distribution could be the origin of the emission of pollutants that constitutes a serious health risk in urban areas. Nitrate was used as a pollution indicator in the Pablillo River Basin (PRB), to know the evolution of groundwater quality between 1981 and 2009 using GIS platform linked to vulnerability maps of DRASTIC (Depth to the water table; net groundwater Recharge; Aquifer type; Soil type; Topography; Impact of the vadose zone and hydraulic Conductivity of the saturated zone). The study area is centered on the Linares city; changes in aquifer vulnerability were assessed over time on two stages (2007 and 2001). In both cases, depth from surface to groundwater plays an important role by being the most dynamic variable over time. This study shows that the depth of water table is the key factor in the evaluation of groundwater vulnerability. The significance of land-use impact in contamination process called Index of Pollution Risk (IPR) and nitrate distribution process in the aquifer system was used as anthropogenic indicator together with the IPR in order to associate the land-use, the aquifer-vulnerability and human-activities. The final map of IPR allows determining possible polluted zones verified by high nitrate contents over the aquifer system. Land-use proved to be an important parameter necessary to correct the vulnerability maps using the DRASTIC method. This as-R. A. Dávila Pórcel et al. 1469 sessment is valid for situations where a specific time is defined because six of seven parameters change their properties in a very long term. The IPR-map could be an important key tool to prevent complex scenarios of groundwater contamination and to improve the aquifer management for decision makers, governments and private companies.

Vulnerability to Aquifer Pollution in the Mexican Wine Producing Valley of Guadalupe, México

“…The outcomes produce aquifer vulnerability maps validated with the concentration of nitrates. The spatial distribution of nitrates reveals areas with high and low levels, which are subsequently correlated with moderate, high, and very high vulnerability zones, respectively [32].…”

Modelling the Temporal Dynamics of Groundwater Pollution Risks at the African Scale

“…In recent years, some studies have attempted to integrate the temporal dimension to investigate groundwater vulnerability evolution under varying environmental conditions and climate change [6,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. For instance, Dennis and Dennis [23] introduced temporal dynamics in the DART (Depth to water-level change, Aquifer type (storativity), Recharge and Transmissivity) vulnerability method to investigate climate change impact on groundwater vulnerability for South-African aquifers.…”

Optimizing the DRASTIC Method for Nitrate Pollution in Groundwater Vulnerability Assessments: a Case Study in China

“…In the improvements of the DRASTIC model proposed by several researchers, factors were subtracted from the model [38] or factors like land use or irrigation type and groundwater quality were added to the model [39]. DRASTIC has been incorporated into other procedures or models, such as DRASIC and DRATIL [24,30].…”