RAVI SHANKAR DUBEY

and 1 more

The identification of a prospective groundwater recharge zone is crucial for supplementing groundwater resources. It's especially critical in the hard rock region, where groundwater is the principal source of potable water and is fast disappearing due to uncontrolled mining. The present study used a combination of modern methodologies and technologies to analyze the groundwater potential zone occurrence, including geographic information system (GIS), remote sensing (RS), electrical resistivity i.e. VES, and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). Several thematic layers were prepared, including geomorphology, lineament density, drainage density, soil type, geology, rainfall, soil texture, elevation, and land use land cover (LULC), which were weighed according to their impact on the groundwater prospect zone. The analytical hierarchical process (AHP) was used in this study to apply normalization to relative assistance. Vertical electrical sounding was used to find water bearing formations/fracture zones at various points throughout the selected region. The five prospective groundwater prospect zones that were delineated using these methods have been classified as very low, low, moderate, high, and very high. The delineated high groundwater potential zones were found in the northeastern part and a little below the central region, while low to moderate zones were found almost evenly distributed all over the region. The acquired result was validated using well yield data, which showed a 72 percent accuracy with our delineated groundwater potential zone. Hence, the AHP model in the current work has outperformed the competition in terms of prediction accuracy.