Groundwater Potential Mapping of Ukmeh River Watershed Area of Upper Vindhyan Region using Remote Sensing and GIS

Abstract

The Sihu river watershed area of Mahoba district is a hard rock terrain which comprises Precambrian Granitic Complex. The study area lies between 79ᵒ44᾿E to 80 ᵒ0’E longitude and 25ᵒ25’N to 25ᵒ37’N latitude which is located in the north-eastern part of the Mahoba district. An attempt has been made to delineate groundwater potential zones of Sihu river watershed region using topomaps, satellite imageries, and ground truthing of the features created and detected. For delineation of groundwater potential zones, various data layers such as lithology, drainage, lineament, slope and Land Use/Land Cover maps have been created due to their relative importance in holding capacity of groundwater amongst other parameters in case of hard rock terrain. A multicriteria evaluation following probable weightage approach has been made for map overlay analysis which allows linear combination of weights of each thematic map. The resultant map demonstrates the possible groundwater potential zones of the Sihu river watershed region. Since the region is hard rock terrain and bears very low soil thickness cover so it is only the secondary porosity characteristic of the rock which holds the groundwater. The acute shortage and uneven distribution of the groundwater levels lead us to delineate the probable groundwater potential mapping of the region. In the study area the north-east region shows very high groundwater potential zone.