Spatial analysis of groundwater potential zones using remote sensing, gis and mif techniques in uppar odai sub-watershed, nandiyar, cauvery basin, Tamil nadu

Groundwater is a natural resource of the earth that sustains and supports domestic, agricultural and industrial activities. Over half of the world’s population depends on groundwater for drinking water supplies. Its usage is increasing due to rapid population growth, high rate of urbanization, industrial growth and agricultural utilizations. This has resulted to rapid depletion of groundwater which leads to water stress and degradation of these resources. The situation is further worsened by inadequate information on groundwater resource which has been and is still a big obstacle to the proper management of these resources. Remote sensing and GIS techniques have emerged as very effective and reliable tools in the assessment, monitoring and conservation of groundwater resources. In the present paper, various groundwater potential zones for the assessment of groundwater availability in Uppar odai sub-watershed, Nandiyar, Cauvery Basin, Tamil Nadu have been delineated using remote sensing and GIS techniques. Survey of India toposheets and IRS-1C satellite imageries are used to prepare various thematic layers viz. lithology, slope, landuse/land cover, lineament, drainage, geomorphology, soil, and rainfall were transformed to raster data using feature to raster converter tool in ArcGIS 10.1. The raster maps of these factors are allocated a fixed score and weight computed from multi influencing factor (MIF) technique. Moreover, each weighted thematic layer is statistically computed to get the groundwater potential zones. The groundwater potential zones thus obtained were divided into four categories, viz., excellent, good, moderate and poor zones. The result depicts the groundwater potential zones in the study area and found to be helpful in better planning and management of groundwater resources.