Abstract
Climate change and rapid increase in global population have created a huge pressure on the groundwater resource around the globe. Excessive withdrawal of groundwater has resulted in lowering of water table as well as groundwater contamination in the aquifers. In this present study, five agricultural blocks of Dakshin Dinajpur district, West Bengal, India, were studied to check the vulnerability of the alluvial aquifers. A total of ten thematic layers such as slope, geology, land use/land cover, aquifer type, drainage density, rainfall distribution, soil type, curvature, topographical wetness index (TWI), and normalized difference water index (NDWI) were compiled to create the groundwater potential map, using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) technique in the spatial analyst tool in ArcGIS 10.0. The resulted groundwater potential map showed four different zones: poor (297.49 km2), moderate (497.71 km2), good (435.02 km2), and excellent (245.29 km2). The northern and eastern parts of the study area show excellent to good potential for groundwater availability, whereas the southern part mostly shows poor groundwater potential. The final groundwater potential map was validated using groundwater fluctuation and correlated with the dependency of the groundwater for irrigation in different blocks.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), State Water Investigation Directorate (SWID), Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), and Irrigation & Waterways Department (West Bengal) for their support during the work. The authors also heartily extend their thanks to anonymous reviewers for their valuable constructive comments and suggestions.
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Barua, S., Mukhopadhyay, B.P. & Bera, A. Integrated assessment of groundwater potential zone under agricultural dominated areas in the western part of Dakshin Dinajpur district, West Bengal, India. Arab J Geosci 14, 1042 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-021-07312-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-021-07312-y