Assessment of groundwater potential zones using geospatial techniques in Mangalore Taluk, Dakshina Kannada District, Karnataka, India

¹ Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Andalas, Padang, Indonesia
² Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Andalas, Padang, Indonesia
³ Mangalore Institute of Technology and Engineering, Mangaluru, Karnataka, India

^* Corresponding author: elsaeka@eng.unand.ac.id

Abstract

Despite sufficient rainfall, a large part of India suffers from water scarcity. Groundwater occurs in weathered or semi-weathered/fractured layers in hard-rock areas whose thickness varies, generally, from 5m to 20m. Satellite pictures are widely being used for groundwater exploration. Study and analysis of remote sensing data is a fast and economical way of finding and exploring. Present study, for assessment of groundwater availability in Mangalore taluk, Dakshina Kannada District, Karnataka state, shows various groundwater potential zones delineated using remote sensing and GIS techniques. Groundwater availability in Mangalore taluk was divided based on its hydro geomorphologic conditions. Satellite imageries are used for preparing various thematic maps, viz. slope, drainage density, lineament, land use/cover, soil, rainfall, geology and geomorphology map, which were transformed to raster class data using the feature to raster converter tool in ArcGIS. All the raster maps were allocated a fixed percentage of influence, after which a weighted overlay tool or technique was used. Each weighted thematic layer was computed statistically for the groundwater potential zones. The results were verified with bore well yield data from India Water Resources Information System (IWRIS). The results yielded a good match with the obtained bore well data with an accuracy of 82.14%.