Investigation of groundwater potential zones in NandiAru Sub Basin, Tamilnadu, India—an integrated geophysical and geoinformatics approach

Abstract

Groundwater plays a vital role in the development of human and agricultural activities in India. Assessing the groundwater potential zone is extremely important for the protection of water quality and the groundwater management system. In this view, the study is carried out to investigate the groundwater potential zones for the assessment of groundwater availability in NandiAru sub-basin, Tamilnadu, India, by using a multidisciplinary database. Integration of geophysical techniques and geoinformatics can provide a suitable platform for convergence of multi-disciplinary data from different sources of planning. Using geophysical techniques 27 Schlumberger vertical electrical sounding (VES) survey was carried out up to a depth of 150 m in the whole study area. The field data were interpreted by using IPI2WIN software to find out the earth subsurface thickness and resistivity of different layers. The spatial distributions of thematic layers were prepared from geophysical resistivity survey data and these integrated over geology, geomorphology, and lineament density by using Arc GIS 9.3. These thematic layers were used as parameters in analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to derive the priority values of all thematic layers. The groundwater potential map has been prepared based on the priority values of each thematic features and the potential of groundwater classified as high, moderate, and low zones.