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Vulnerability assessment of urban groundwater resources to nitrate: the case study of Mashhad, Iran

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Abstract

Groundwater vulnerability assessment of urban areas is a challenging task in the fast trend of urbanization around the globe. This study introduces a new approach for modifying well-known parameters of common vulnerability indexes to adjust them for urban areas. The approach is independent of a specific weighting system. The aquifer of Mashhad city, contaminated by domestic wastewater, is selected as a case in this study. In order to evaluate the aquifer vulnerability due to anthropogenic activities, at first, parameters of depth to groundwater, recharge, land use, and soil are modified based on their basic concepts and their influences on contamination attenuation. Then, the modified parameters are used simultaneously in several index methods to investigate the capability of the modified parameters to increase correlation coefficient of all employed index methods with the measured nitrate concentration. Accuracy of the modified methods is evaluated by Spearman nonparametric correlation. It is shown that considering the wastewater discharge into recharge parameter leads to an increase of 20% in correlation coefficient. Also, level difference technique shows that more than 70% of the vulnerable areas are predicted correctly in all utilized methods. The accurate prediction in all employed methods indicates that these modifications are independent of the type of index method. Moreover, sensitivity analysis reveals that the recharge and the land use are both the most significant parameters for evaluating the vulnerability.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their sincere appreciation to Eng. Ahmad Ghandehari, Eng. Mostafa Nakhaei, and Mr. Yaser soltani for their collaboration in data collection. The support of Regional Water Authority of Khorasan-e-Razavi is acknowledged. The authors appreciate the constructive comments of anonymous reviewers and Editor-in-Chief Prof. Olaf Kolditz on this paper, which helped to improve the final paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, P.O. Box 1115-9313, Tehran, Iran

    Parisa Asadi & Behzad Ataie-Ashtiani

  2. Water Resources Engineering Department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, P.O. Box 91775-1163, Mashhad, Iran

    Aliasghar Beheshti

Authors
  1. Parisa Asadi
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  2. Behzad Ataie-Ashtiani
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  3. Aliasghar Beheshti
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Correspondence to Parisa Asadi.

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Asadi, P., Ataie-Ashtiani, B. & Beheshti, A. Vulnerability assessment of urban groundwater resources to nitrate: the case study of Mashhad, Iran. Environ Earth Sci 76, 41 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-016-6357-z

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