Identification of groundwater potential zones in Mandavi River basin, Andhra Pradesh, India using remote sensing, GIS and MIF techniques

Abstract

Identification of groundwater potential zones (GWPZ) in a crystalline rock terrain is a crucial task for sustainable groundwater resource management, through scientific knowledge and modern geospatial techniques. Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) plays a key role in evaluating, conserving and monitoring various groundwater-related development programs. The present study integrates RS, GIS and multi influence factor (MIF) techniques for evaluating GWPZ in Mandavi River basin. In this connection IRS-R2 LISS IV satellite imagery, the Survey Of India (SOI) toposheets and various auxiliary data sets from different sources have been used in preparing thematic maps like drainage density, lineament density, geology, soil, geomorphology, slope, rainfall, soil texture, land use/land cover and groundwater levels. Then the thematic layers were changed into raster format in Arc GIS 10.4 environment. Weights and ratings have been statistically calculated and assigned to raster maps based on the technique named multi-influence factor. Finally, it is found that the GWPZ were classified into four type's viz. very poor, poor, good, and very good with spatial extents of 533 sq. km (36%), 510 sq. km (35%), 319 sq. km (21%) and 103 sq. km (7%) respectively. The end results were validated with the observation of well data. The overall accuracy and kappa coefficients were 72.8% and 0.63 respectively, which shows a good correlation between groundwater potential zones and the observed well data. These results will help hydrogeologists, decision-makers, planners and local authorities to formulate better groundwater resource planning in the Mandavi River Basin. Keywords: Groundwater potential zones (GWPZ), Multi influence factor (MIF), Remote sensing and GIS, Mandavi River basin