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

The supply of groundwater is not unlimited and therefore its use should be properly planned based on the understanding of the groundwater system’s behavior in order to ensure its sustainable use. An attempt has been made in the present study to select and delineate different potential groundwater zones for the need of proper assessment of groundwater availability in the Ukmeh river watershed area which belongs to the upper Vindhyan region. In order to prepare various thematic maps viz. lithological, slope, lineament density, drainage density maps satellite IRS-IC LISS III, SRTM data, and Landsat TM digital were used. The weightage has been given to the thematic maps based on their relative contribution towards groundwater potentiality. In order to compute groundwater potential index, all the thematic maps with each other were registered. This was made with the help of ground control points and proper step by step integrated approach applying normalized aggregated method in GIS. So on the basis of final weight map and their ranking, groundwater potential zones were delineated. It was observed that groundwater potential zones in the present area of discussion can successfully be observed with the above integrated approach method. The potential zones are categorised into five parts namely very poor, poor, moderate, good and very good. The economic target areas in the resultant map have been marked by the very good to moderate potential zones. The majority of the study area found to be dominated by good to moderate prospect zone potentiality. The present technique used to delineate groundwater potential zones has been done in different areas but this area has not been studied so far so is now been first studied for groundwater potentiality using the technique.