Identifying Prospective Areas for Groundwater Potential in Allahabad City

Groundwater is an important resource, contributing significantly to the total annual supply. However, over-exploitation has depleted groundwater availability considerably. Assessing the potential zone of groundwater recharge is extremely important for the protection of water quality and the management of groundwater systems. Integration of Remote Sensing data and the Geographical Information System (GIS) for the exploration of groundwater resources has become a breakthrough in the field of groundwater research, which can assist in assessing, monitoring and conserving groundwater resources. The accurate information to obtain the parameters that can be considered for identifying the groundwater potential zone were found to be geomorphology, slope, land use/land cover and lithology. In this study weighted overlay method has been utilized in the ArcGIS environment. Suitable ranks were assigned for each category of the parameters; the procedure was repeated for all other layers and the resultant layers were reclassified. About 43.44 sq. km of the total study area was falling under the ‘very poor’ groundwater potential zone, 21.56 sq. km under the 'poor' zone, 18.89 sq. km under the moderate zone and 12.61 sq. km under the 'very good' zone. The excellent groundwater potential zone was concentrated in the northeast region of the study area due to the distribution of alluvial plains and agricultural land with high infiltration ability. This potential groundwater information will be useful for the effective identification of suitable locations for the extraction of water. The study will be useful in conserving natural resources which are depleting at high rates due to the pressure and demand of the increasing population.