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Delineation of groundwater resources using electrical resistivity tomography

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Abstract

Chandrabhaga basin of the Nagpur district is a part of the drought prone Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, India. This region is facing acute shortage of water for drinking and irrigation purposes. The basin is located at the eastern fringe of the Deccan traps consisting of volcanic rocks. Presently, dug wells penetrating composite layers of the weathered mantle and highly fractured rocks overlying stratified basaltic lava flows are the main source of water supply. However, water available in the dug wells is inadequate to meet the ever increasing demand for water causing considerable economic losses to the farming community. In this work, we present the results of an electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) survey carried out in the basin for the delineation of groundwater potential zones. Validity of the hydrogeological setup obtained from the ERT results has been confirmed by bore well drillings at two investigated sites. The study demonstrates the efficacy of the ERT technique in delineation of groundwater potential zones in the hydrogeologically complex basaltic terrain of the Deccan traps.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Director, CSIR-National Geophysical Research Institute for his permission to publish this work. Our thanks are due to anonymous reviewer for his constructive criticism and numerous corrections which have been very useful in improving the manuscript. We thank L. Adilakshmi for preparing the location map using GIS platform.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIR-National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, Telangana, 500007, India

    S. Thiagarajan, S. N. Rai, Dewashish Kumar & A. Manglik

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  1. S. Thiagarajan
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  2. S. N. Rai
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  3. Dewashish Kumar
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  4. A. Manglik
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Correspondence to S. Thiagarajan.

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Thiagarajan, S., Rai, S.N., Kumar, D. et al. Delineation of groundwater resources using electrical resistivity tomography. Arab J Geosci 11, 212 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-018-3562-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-018-3562-y

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