Prioritization of sites for Managed Aquifer Recharge in a semi-arid environment in western India using GIS-Based multicriteria evaluation strategy

Abstract

Over the years, the droughts in India have affected a larger part of land due to its highly erratic nature of rainfall. A management strategy becomes essential in chronically prone semi-arid terrains when drought experience is felt in a falling water table and a lesser crop productivity. Depletion of finite groundwater (GW) resources pose a serious challenge to sustenance of watersheds with perpetual aridity in these regions. Projects of Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) in degraded watersheds mostly as check dams or percolation ponds lead to improvement in drought resilience with increased recharge and rising ground water levels. Present study attempts to follow a mitigation plan and provides for some prioritized suitable sites with few recommended civil structure types. Extensive and integrated use of satellite data over a GIS platform is applied for an ideal semi-arid basin of river Bhadar flowing in western part of the country. The various reclassified thematic rasters are created accordingly and evaluated each relative to one another on a common ranking scale before being assigned the appropriate weights as per an AHP-drawn exercise. The entire basin is investigated for spatial distribution of suitability zones in augmenting GW recharge and prioritized in five classes. Preferences for a structure type is made in high priority zones with exact locations requiring further field-verifications. The results underline a crucial strategic planning of achieving optimum recharge in otherwise dried or depleting aquifers of a drought afflicted river basin. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.