Groundwater Potential Mapping in a Part of Malaprabha River Basin using Remote Sensing Data and Geographic Information System (GIS)

Abstract

The objective of this study is to explore the groundwater availability for agriculture in a part of Malaprabha river basin. Remote sensing data and Geographic Information System (GIS) are used to locate potential zones for groundwater in the part of Malaprabha river basin. Various maps (i.e., base, hydrogeomorphological, geological, aspect, drainage, slope, land use/land cover and groundwater prospect zones) are prepared using the remote sensing data along with the existing maps Ranks and weights are assigned to the categories and maps to show the importance of a hydrologic parameter or parametric map on the ground water potentiality. It determines the influence of each parameter on the potentiality. Each category of a particular map is assigned ranks according to their suitability and each parametric map is given certain weightage based on its influence on the ground water availability. Higher ranks are given to most suitable category and ranks decrease as per the decrease in suitability. This study helped to delineate the potentiality as very good, good, moderate and poor potential zones.

Keywords: Remote sensing, Geographic Information System, Malaprabha river basin, ArcGIS.