Abstract
Groundwater is one of the most valuable nature reserves globally and its availability and quality are essential for the welfare of human beings. Anthropogenic activity has a significant influence on the contamination of groundwater resources. This investigation was performed to understand this problem by calculating a water quality index (WQI) with a geographic information system (GIS) to assess groundwater quality in the coal mining region of the Ramgarh and Hazaribagh districts, Jharkhand, India. Groundwater samples were obtained during the pre-monsoon (n = 45) and post-monsoon (n = 31) seasons from multiple sampling sites in the study area. The samples were examined for 10 physicochemical and 5heavy metal parameters such as arsenic (As), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), and lead (Pb). Except Fe and Mn remaining elements were below the detection level (BDL). The WQI results showed that 189.76 km2 (22.34%) in the pre-monsoon and 694.93 km2 (81.83%) of the study areas lie under good and excellent water quality zones, respectively. Principal component analysis (PCA) was utilized to source ions that incorporate three factors, including eigenvalues cut off at higher than unity. Total variance achieved for both the pre and post-monsoon seasons was 65.20% and 73.16%. Factors thus extracted resemble the relationship with geology, widespread coal mining, transportation, and industrial origin of the elements. Results revealed that the maximum portion of the study area is under a poor to unsuitable zone (77.65%) for drinking purposes during pre-monsoon, whereas the same area found suitable for drinking usage in the post-monsoon season.
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Acknowledgements
Authors are extremely grateful to the anonymous referees for their technical comments for the improvement of the manuscript. Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Mesra, Ranchi, India supported this research, under the Institute research fellowship for Ph.D. programme. Authors are thankful to Central Instrumentation Facility (CIF) of BIT, Mesra to provide Perkin Elmer Optical 2100DV, Inductively Coupled Plasma- Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) instrument for heavy metals analysis. The authors are also grateful to Mr. Jamshed Alam and Mr. Sams Raza for their kind support during the groundwater sample collection in the study area.
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Kumar, A., Krishna, A.P. Groundwater quality assessment using geospatial technique based water quality index (WQI) approach in a coal mining region of India. Arab J Geosci 14, 1126 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-021-07474-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-021-07474-9