Identification of Ground Water Potential Zone of Giridih District, Jharkhand, India Using Geospatial Technologies

Abstract

The depletion of groundwater is a primary global concern, derived by the escalating incidence of water scarcity in many regions. Identifying ground water potential zone (GWPZ) is one of the most important challenges. This study purpose is to delineate the GWPZ using the Geospatial technology (Remote sensing, GIS, GPS) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method of Giridih district, Jharkhand India. Different thematic layers like Rainfall (RF), Drainage Density (DD), Land use land cover (LULC), Geomorphology (GE), Lithology (LI), Slope (SL), Soil (SO) were taken into consideration to identify groundwater potential zones. All the above-mentioned thematic layers were generated using remotely sensed data in GIS environment. After that based on their relative importance suitable weights were assign to all thematic layer derived from Saaty’s scale. These thematic layers were integrated using weighted linear combination method in ArcGIS. The GWPZ of the study area were then categorized as good, moderate, and poor. The results shows that northern parts of the study area fall within the poor GWPZ zone, accounting for approximately 29.25% of the total area. The moderate and good potential zones cover about 52.56% and 16.45% of the study area, respectively.