Abstract
In Australia, water resource management is a major environmental, biological, and socio-economic issue, and will be an essential component of future development. The Hawker Area of the central Flinders Ranges, South Australia suffers from a lack of reliable data to help with water resource management and decision making. The present study aimed to delineate and assess groundwater recharge potential (GWRP) zones using an integration between the remote sensing (RS), geographic information system (GIS), and multi-influencing factors (MIF) approaches in the Hawker Area of the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. Many thematic layers such as lithology, drainage density, slope, and lineament density were established in a GIS environment for the purpose of identifying groundwater recharge potential zones. A knowledge base ranking from 1 to 5 was assigned to each individual thematic layer and its categories, depending on each layer’s importance to groundwater recharge potential zones. All of the thematic layers were integrated to create a combined groundwater potential map of the study area using weighting analysis in ArcGIS software. The groundwater potential zones were categorized into three classes, good, moderate, and low. The resulting zones were verified using available water data and showed a relative consistency with the interpretations. The findings of this study indicated that the most effective groundwater potential recharge zones are located where the lineament density is high, the drainage density is low, and the slope is gentle. The least effective areas for groundwater recharge are underlain by shale and siltstone. The results indicated that there were interrelationships between the groundwater recharge potential factors and the general hydrology characteristics scores of the catchment. MIF analysis using GIS mapping techniques proved to be a very useful tool in the evaluation of hydrogeological systems and could enable decision makers to evaluate, better manage, and protect a hydrogeological system using a single platform.
Highlights
In Australia, groundwater is vital for domestic, agricultural, mining, and industrial purposes [1]
The results indicated that the watershed shows a dendritic drainage pattern; the total area (A) of the watershed is 916.4 km2 and length (LB) is 49.5 km (Figure 6a)
The results showed that 29.29% of the wells with a high water yield are sited on good areas, 62.86% with moderate yield are located on moderate areas, and 7.86% are on poor groundwater potential recharge zones (Figure 8)
Summary
In Australia, groundwater is vital for domestic, agricultural, mining, and industrial purposes [1]. Most of the continent has faced water scarcity due to the overuse of groundwater that led to an unacceptable decline in water levels causing serious issues such as increased groundwater salinity, high pumping costs, seawater intrusion, and loss of access to groundwater by users and ecosystems [1]. Traditional methods such as geophysical and hydrogeological techniques that have been used in groundwater potential assessment are costly and time-consuming. The determination of the distribution of groundwater recharge potential zones is a useful tool for sustainable groundwater management
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