Fluvio-dynamics and Groundwater System in the Narmada River Basin, India

Abstract

Availability of water resources in any region depends on various factors like climate, precipitation, geologic and geomorphic setting. As such the surface and groundwater resource potentials of different river basins also differ. Climatic driven dynamics in the fluvial regimes in a river basin also affect the groundwater system, since both these spheres of water resources remain mutually dependent and do possess a give-and-take relationship. Variabilities in the discharge and sediment load along with changes in the river power modify the centres of erosion and deposition in the floodplain. Other than the autogenic controls of hydrologic origin, various tectonic regimes of allogenic origin also affect the river channel behaviour, its unit power and the morphometry of the river channel and floodplain as well by modifying the slope of land surface. The river channel dynamisms (shifting through migration and avulsion), the channel morphometry and the associated fluvial landforms (channels, point bars, braid bars, levees, floodplain etc.) carve out the geomorphology and the alluvail architecture in a river valley (Cant and Walker, 1978; Wells and Dorr, 1987; Bristow, 1996; Sinha et al., 2005). Spatial variation in lithofacies record in the sedimentary architecture bears clues to the statial and temporal variations in the fluvial processes over time (Bridge and Leeder, 1979; Blum and Tornquist, 2000; Bridge and Karssenberg, 2005). Thus, the availability of granular zones, their spatial extent and geometry in the sedimentary architecture which form aquifer systems of various potentials depends on the spatial variabilities in the fluvial dynamics in the river basin over time.