Analysis of groundwater potential zones using electrical resistivity, rs & gis techniques in a typical mine area of odisha

Abstract

Despite sufficient rainfall, large part of India suffers from water scarcity. Ground water occurs in weathered or semi-weathered/fractured layers in hard-rock areas whose thickness varies, in general, from 5m to 20m. Satellite pictures are widely being used for groundwater exploration because of its ability to identify various ground features, which may serve as an indicator of groundwater’s presence, Study and analysis of remote sensing data is a fast and economical way of finding and exploring. Present study, for assessment of groundwater availability in Tensa valley (Sunderghar District, Odisha) shows various groundwater potential zones. India had been delineated using remote sensing and GIS techniques. The groundwater availability at the valley was roughly divided into different classes (i.e., Excellent, very good, good, moderate, and poor) based on its hydrogeomorphological condition. Toposheets by Survey of India and IRS-1C satellite imageries are used for preparing various thematic maps viz. geomorphology, slope, land-use, lineament density, drainage density, and soil map, were transformed to raster class data using feature to raster converter tool in ArcGIS. All the raster maps were allocated to a fixed percentage of influence and weighted their after weighted overlay tool or technique was used. For getting the groundwater potential zones, each weighted thematic layer was computed statistically. The results thus obtained were later verified with resistivity survey test data. The results obtained were integrated with the different thematic maps on GIS platform which yielded a good match with the obtained resistivity test result. Further, a low cost soil moisture meter has been designed and developed in the Department of Civil Engineering to monitor the surface moisture which also acts as the indicator of possible groundwater potential sites, different crops and plants/trees located in the region.