Impact of Urbanization on Temporal Ground Water Levels – A Case Study of Visakhapatnam Metro Region, India

  • Sridevi Talluri, S. Adi Seshu, Victor Babu., Sridhar. B,
Keywords: Aquifer Recharge, Ground Water Levels, Over Exploitation, Precipitation, Urbanization, Land use, Land cover.

Abstract

Ground water is an important natural and renewable resource of the earth. It is a vital source for human activities, agriculture and industrial productions and has significant role in the economy. All around the world, ground water exploitation started during last few decades. Rapid decline in Groundwater levels is of major concern in many growing cities around the world. GIS based ground water contours and raster maps will give baseline ground water information in data scarce location and play a major roles in saving both time and money. The rate of change of urbanization directly impacts groundwater occurrence and levels. Therefore, this study investigates the changes in land use and land cover (LULC) and ground water levels (gwl). It further evaluates water level trend in 86 observational wells spread across 44 mandals of Visakhapatnam Metro Region (VMR) in the coming years. VMR covers both urban and rural areas. Multiyear water level maps were prepared for the years 2014 to 2018 to understand temporal changes in ground water levels. Land use Land cover maps are prepared (5 year interval) to study urbanization. The water level maps revealed a depletion rate of about 2m to 10 m/per year in the urban parts of the city. From this analysis, it was observed that, there are five mandals which has serious groundwater lowering problem.

Published
2021-11-24
How to Cite
Victor Babu., Sridhar. B, , S. T. S. A. S. (2021). Impact of Urbanization on Temporal Ground Water Levels – A Case Study of Visakhapatnam Metro Region, India. Design Engineering, 15767-15777. Retrieved from http://thedesignengineering.com/index.php/DE/article/view/6718
Section
Articles