Niger is a landlocked African country and the only source of surface water is the Niger River which flows in the western part of Niger and only few villages near to the river gets benefited from it, leaving most of the areas dependent on groundwater solely. The groundwater resources in Niger are mainly used for drinking, livestock and domestic needs. It can be observed that the water exploitation is minimal there due to several factors like undeveloped areas, less population, limited wells, rain-fed irrigation, etc. The delineation of potential aquifer zones is an important aspect for groundwater prospecting. Hence, the direct current (DC) resistivity soundings method also known as vertical electrical sounding (VES) is one of the most applied geophysical techniques for groundwater prospecting that was used in the capital city, Niamey of Niger. Twelve VES surveys, each of AB spacing 400 m were carried out in lateritic and granitic rock formations with a view to study the layer response and to delineate the potential zones. Potential aquifer zones were at shallow depth ranging from 10 to 25 m for the drilled borehole depth of 80-85 m in every village. Analysis of the result showed a good correlation between the acquired data and the lithologs.
In the past few decades, rapid population growth, increasing agricultural practices and industrialization have transformed the water ecosystem around the world (Aeschbach-Hertig & Gleeson, 2012). More than 40% world's population currently lives in water stressed river basins. Excessive groundwater exploitation in comparison to the recharge causes depletion and deterioration of groundwater resources, resulting in drying up of the lakes and rivers, etc. Due to heavy dependence of irrigation on groundwater resources many leading food grains producing countries like USA, China, India, and Australia are reaching their water resource limits. India is one of the worst affected countries facing imminent water crisis (NITI, 2018). The Ganga basin known to hold voluminous amount of groundwater in multi-layered aquifer system caters to the groundwater needs of a large population of India (Das & Tamminga, 2012;Bank, 2014). However, it is under heavy stress with a large-scale depletion and quality deterioration of the groundwater leading to environmental, economic and health issues (Asoka et al., 2017;Fendorf & Benner, 2016;Tiwari et al., 2009). The problem is most alarming in the "Doab (interfluve)" region bounded by the Ganga and Yamuna rivers. The poor water quality pervades not only the Ganga and Yamuna Rivers but also seems to be entering the associated aquifers (Misra & Mishra, 2007;Prakash et al., 2020).Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) programs are the most effective and environmental-friendly solution to achieve sustainable water security (Dillon et al., 2010). An effective MAR program necessitates high-resolution
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.