The response of groundwater to multiple concerning drivers and its future: a study on Birbhum District, West Bengal, India

Abstract

Groundwater and its upcoming crisis are the present-day concern of the scientist. This research mainly focuses on responses of groundwater dynamicity to some important drivers, viz. agricultural yield, groundwater irrigated area, groundwater draft, landuse/landcover, and stage of development. The result of this study has been done under three sections. In the first section, the spatiality of groundwater has been discussed where it has been noticed that the western side of the district groundwater level is near the surface due to low drafting and low agricultural yield. Moreover, hard rock geology in the western part disappoints the drilling process. On the eastern part, rich alluvial soil influences high agricultural yield hence groundwater level lowering down rapidly. In the second section, the nature of groundwater levels has been analyzed through the boxplot, and cluster diagram, where boxplots have been drawn over different geological facies, which depicts groundwater is highly fluctuating in hard clay geology. For example, high agricultural intensity and high groundwater draft is the characteristic feature of hard clay geology. The dendrogram in cluster analysis represents a homogeneous groundwater level fluctuating station in three different time series. Last section deals with the future of groundwater level where an artificial neural network (ANN) model has been applied to extract the predicted groundwater level for 2030. This type of environmental analysis, such as groundwater fluctuations in relation to different sensitive parameters and the use of a machine learning model, would aid potential researchers and communities in making wise groundwater use decisions.

Examining the groundwater level in a semi-arid district of eastern India: spatiotemporal trends, determinants, and future prospects

“…Further, utilizing time-series data with a relevant and appropriate simulation model to anticipate the future status of an event can aid in successful and long-term policy planning (Banerjee et al, 2009;Das et al, 2021). In the current study, on the basis of 20 years trend of the pre-monsoon and post-monsoon GWL for each station, the next 11 years (up to 2030) GWL has been predicted.…”

“…Scientists from throughout the world are worried about the related emerging challenges. (Das et al, 2021;Sishodia et al, 2016). Although it is a renewable resource, the storage of genuinely useable freshwater is limited.…”

“…Along with the physical factors, there are different anthropogenic factors, which are responsible for the diverse spatio-temporal variability of groundwater in terms of quantity and quality. However, after the green revolution and the introduction of HYV (High Yield Varieties) seeds in India, irrigation has become one of the major forces that stimulate the daily increase in depth of the subsurface water table (Das et al, 2021; Kashyap & Agarwal, 2021). Apart from irrigation, land use intensi cation, massive population growth, rapid urbanization, industrialization, etc., also shaped groundwater overexploitation in India (Paria et al, 2021).…”