Identification of Critical Ground Water Potential Zones Using AHP & Geospatial Techniques

Abstract

The use of water has increased rapidly as a result of urbanization and industrialization. Population growth raises water demand, especially in urban areas. Infrastructures in urban areas have rendered land surfaces impervious, lowering the water level on the ground surface. The objective of the research was to determine the groundwater potential of a kharun river basin located in Chhattisgarh, India. In this analysis, a combination of geographic information systems (GIS) and analytical hierarchical process techniques (AHP) were used. For groundwater potential zone demarcation, ten thematic layers were prepared and analyzed, including Geology, Land Use Land Cover, Lineament density, Drainage density, Rainfall, Soil texture, Slope, Pre and Post ground water depth and NDVI. According to their properties, the AHP method is used to assign weights to each class in all thematic layers. The resulting groundwater potential zone map was divided into five categories: very high, high, moderate, medium, and very low. According to the study, the area covered very low GWPZs was approximately 714 km2 (18%), whereas the moderate classes comprise an area of 2436 km2, which is 59% of the total area.  A zone with an id 18 which was identified as a critical zone in overall study area which is required to recharge artificially. For that details of proposed structures for critical zone of the study area are also located which are arranged on the basis of stream order of natural drainage. For the artificial recharge in the kharun basin there are four structures storage tank, percolation tank, stop dam and check dams are suitable Where in first stream order storage tank were located, in second stream order, percolation tanks were proposed in third stream order stop dams were placed and in fourth stream order Check dams were proposed.