Assessment of Groundwater Quality of Lalitpur District, Uttar Pradesh Using GIS Mapping

Abstract

Water is the mainstay of survival. No life can exist without water, since water is essential not only for existence of human beings, but also for animals, plants and all other living beings. Groundwater is the most important natural resource required for drinking to many people around the world, especially in rural areas. The aim of the present study is to provide an overview of current status of groundwater quality and to analyse spatial distribution of groundwater quality in Lalitpur district, Uttar Pradesh. Lalitpur district is the southernmost part of Uttar Pradesh, lies between 24°11' to 25°14' north latitude and 78°10' to 79°0' east longitude. The study area faces water paucity as well as water quality problems. Geographic Information System (GIS) based assessment of spatiotemporal behaviour of groundwater quality has been carried out for all blocks of Lalitpur district. The ground water quality parameters were analysed for 400 samples collected from all the blocks of Lalitpur district and then surface maps were prepared for six water quality parameters ( pH, TDS, total hardness, chloride, fluoride and iron) in the ArcGIS 9.3 (spatial analyst module) to assess the quality in terms of spatial variation by interpolation between the available data, which helped to analyse the present ground water pollution scenario of the study area. The final ground water quality maps represent the ground water zones that are desirable and undesirable for drinking purpose and also identify the zones where high concentration of TDS, Hardness, chloride, iron etc are present in the study area.