GIS and AHP Techniques Based Delineation of Groundwater Potential Zones: a case study from Southern Western Ghats, India

Abstract

Over-exploitation of groundwater and marked changes in climate over the years have imposed immense pressure on the global groundwater resources. As demand of potable water increases across the globe for human consumption, agriculture and industrial uses, the need to evaluate the groundwater potential and productivity of aquifers also increases. In the recent years, geographic information system based studies have gained much prominence in groundwater exploration because it is rapid and will provide first - hand information on the resource for further developments. Therefore, the present study has been undertaken with an objective to delineate the groundwater potential of a small tropical river basin located in the western side of the Western Ghats in India as an example. A combination of geographical information system and analytical hierarchical process techniques (AHP) was used in the present study. A total of 12 thematic layers such as Geology, Geomorphology, Land Use/Land Cover, Lineament density, Drainage density, Rainfall, Soil, Slope, Roughness, Topographic Wetness Index, Topographic Position Index and Curvature were prepared and studied for groundwater potential zone demarcation. Weights assigned to each class in all the thematic maps are based on their characteristics and water potential capacity through AHP method. The accuracy of the output was cross-validated with information on groundwater prospects of the area and the overall accuracy of the method comes to around 85%. The groundwater potential zone map thus obtained was categorized into five classes-very high, high, moderate, low and very low. The study reveals that about 59% of the river basin is covered under moderate groundwater potential zone. The low and high groundwater potential zones are observed in 29% and 11% respectively. Area under very high and very low potential zones are recorded only in very limited areas in the basin.

Modeling Groundwater Potential Zone in a Semi-Arid Region of Aseer Using Fuzzy-AHP and Geoinformation Techniques

“…Bhattacharjee [75] estimated the annual groundwater storage based on fluctuations in water levels and specific yield approach. However, in the current study, the groundwater level data, the amount of groundwater data, and the groundwater quality data were limited due to the economic constraint and regional situation of the study area [51,53,56,60,61,65]. Therefore, in this study, an estimation of the values in regions without incorporating the recharge and groundwater head data (i.e., pumping well tests) was carried out using an MCDM model based on hydrogeological factors.…”

“…Al-Ruzouq et al [51] Patra et al [52] Arulbalaji et al [53] Al-Shabeeb et al [54] Adeyeye et al [55] Pinto et al [56] Jasrotia et al [57] Bathis and Ahmed [58] Yeh et al [59] Senanayake et al [3] Al-Abadi [27] Zaidi et al [60] Mallick et al [16] Mahmoud et al [61] Bagyaraj et al [62] Agarwal et al [63] Nag and Ghosh [64] Mukherjee et al [65] Magesh et al [66] Abdalla et al [26] Machiwal et al [30] Preeja et al [67] Chenini et al [ AHP method for MCDM has been widely used in recent decades and has been successfully applied in groundwater potential zone mapping [38][39][40][41]. However, despite the popularity of AHP, the method is sometimes criticized for being unable to adequately deal with the inherent uncertainties and imprecision associated with mapping the perception of a decision-maker to crisp numbers [42].…”

“…The results revealed that the rainfall ranged between 128.5 mm to 147.6 mm, with an annual mean of As per a study carried out by Beven and Kirkby [81], TWI relates upslope areas as a measure of water flowing to a specific point (i.e., to the local slope), which is a measure of the subsurface lateral transmissivity. TWI was widely used to quantify topographical control of hydrological processes and represent the potential exfiltration of groundwater caused by topographical effects; as a result, higher TWI value described higher groundwater potential value [53]. Equation 1given below was used for the calculation of TWI [81].…”

Groundwater Recharge Potential for Sustainable Water Use in Urban Areas of the Jequitiba River Basin, Brazil

“…The karst aquifer of Jequitiba River basin is probably undergoing over-exploitation due to increasing water demand, especially around the Sete Lagoas town where water table decline and suffosional sinkholes are reported for decades. This is enough reason to start an evaluation of groundwater recharge potential, as noted by Arulbalaji et al [116] while conducting a study for delineation of groundwater potential zones in Southern Western Ghats, India. The methodological approach used in that study was also based on geographic information system (GIS), because it is rapid and provides first-hand information on the studied topic for further developments.…”

GIS Based Novel Hybrid Computational Intelligence Models for Mapping Landslide Susceptibility: A Case Study at Da Lat City, Vietnam

“…The lithology map represents physical characteristics of rocks and soils including color, texture, grain size, and composition [87]. In the study area, 11 types of lithology are present: Pliocen, La Nga formation, Don Duong formation, Ankroet-Ca Na complex: Phase 2, Quaternary, Neogen, Ankroet-Ca Na complex: Phase 1, Din Quan complex, Xuan Loc formation, DakRium formation, Ankroet-Ca Na complex: Gangue phase (Figure 3h).…”