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Spatial and decision-making approaches for identifying groundwater potential zones: a review

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Abstract

Effective assessment of any region's groundwater resources depends greatly on the levels of the sub-surface water. Since groundwater resources are being overused, the availability of groundwater is in a critical scenario. Quality of the groundwater is deteriorating in numerous regions as a result of the worrisome rate of groundwater table depletion. Depending on how frequently the aquifer under the earth surface is recharged by surface water supplies, groundwater can be kept underground for days, weeks, months, years, centuries, or even millennia. Currently, the utility is increased as compared to availability. The current water demand exceeds the surface water supply. As a result, for the effective management and usage of the priceless natural resources, groundwater potential zones’ systematic evaluation is now essential. The understanding about monitoring and a suitable sustainable development strategy for water resources is provided by groundwater potential zoning. The delineation of groundwater potential zoning is influenced by various factors, including rainfall, land-use cover, geological formations, geomorphology, drainage features, slope, etc. To ensure the sustainable groundwater management in the basin, it is essential to locate groundwater potential zones, so that series of recharge structures may be built there to manage aquifer recharge. Remote sensing and GIS are recent techniques that become very crucial tools in accessing, monitoring, and conserving groundwater resources because of their advantages of spatial, spectral, and temporal availability and interpolation of data covering big and inaccessible areas in short amount of time.

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The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other supports were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Soil and Water Engineering, College of Technology and Engineering (CTAE), Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture & Technology (MPUAT), Udaipur, Rajasthan, 313 001, India

    Sachin L. Suryawanshi

  2. Department of Soil and Water Engineering, CTAE, MPUAT, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

    Pradeep Kumar Singh, Mahesh Kothari & Manjeet Singh

  3. Department of Soil and Water Engineering, CTAE, MPUAT, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

    Kamal Kishore Yadav

  4. Department of Civil Engineering, CTAE, MPUAT, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

    Trilok Gupta

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  1. Sachin L. Suryawanshi
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Contributions

PKS gives the idea for the review article. SLS, MS, and TG performed the literature search and arrangement of the work that is carried out regarding GWPZs. MK and KKY helped in drafting the manuscript and PKS critically revised the work. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Sachin L. Suryawanshi.

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Suryawanshi, S.L., Singh, P.K., Kothari, M. et al. Spatial and decision-making approaches for identifying groundwater potential zones: a review. Environ Earth Sci 82, 463 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-023-11149-x

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