Applied Water Science (2020) 10:221 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13201-020-01302-3 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Assessment of groundwater potentiality using geospatial techniques in Purba Bardhaman district, West Bengal Subodh Chandra Pal1 · Chiranjit Ghosh1 · Indrajit Chowdhuri1 Received: 21 January 2020 / Accepted: 3 September 2020 / Published online: 19 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020 Abstract The word water is life, so life on this planet cannot be possible without water. Water is an essential natural resource that is a surface and groundwater device for human society. The purpose of this research is to assess the groundwater potentiality of the Purba Bardhaman district. All data (primary and secondary) are collected from diferent sources and analyzed in geographic information system (GIS) software to prepare thematic maps. Diferent geo-environmental factors like as land use and land cover, soil, lithology, rainfall and distance from the river, etc., can impact on groundwater availability directly or indirectly in Purba Bardhaman area. To identify groundwater potential zones, all these factors are composed into GIS software using multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) method. The groundwater potential map has been divided into fve classes based on their magnitude as very high, high, medium, low and very low groundwater potential zones. It shows that the areas of very low, low, medium, high and very high groundwater potential zones are 21.54%, 35.80%, 26.47%, 10.13%, 6.06%, respectively, of the total area. Finally, validation is carried out using groundwater depth data collected from 44 drilled tube wells which are located in a scattered manner for whole Purba Bardhaman district which indicates a higher similarity with an area under curve value of 86.8%. Keywords Groundwater · Purba Bardhaman · Multi-criteria decision analysis · GIS Introduction 2009). The most valuable resource is groundwater which is unevenly distributed. Distribution of groundwater is con- Groundwater is a dynamic resource that plays a vital role trolled according to many criteria, i.e., lithology, geological in nurturing an ecological balance (Das 2017). The largest structure, lineaments, soil, slope, drainage density, distance freshwater resource in the world is groundwater. Today, the from the river, vegetation cover, surface water scenario, land maximum rural population and the total urban population use and land cover, rainfall, climatic condition and interre- depend on groundwater for their basic needs. Proper man- lationship between these factors (Sar et al. 2015; Jothibasu agement strategies cannot be developed in the context of and Anbazhagan2016; Dasho et al.2017). the groundwater decay scenario due to lack of knowledge Six main criteria were used to analyze the groundwater in this area. Maximum groundwater is needed for agricul- potential of Purba Bardhaman, i.e., soil, land use and land ture, drinking water and industry. The absence of ground- cover, lithology, surface water scenario, water distance and water is a common phenomenon in India due to the use of rainfall. In this plain region, they are the most efective. groundwater without proper scientifc planning (Rodell et al. Remote sensing (RS) and GIS techniques (Krishnamurthy et al. 1996; Pothiraj and Rajagopalan 2013; Sar et al. 2015; * Subodh Chandra Pal Anbazhagan and Jothibasu 2016; Jothibasu and Anbazhagan [email protected] 2017; Choudhari et al. 2018; Das and Pal 2019a, b) are very Chiranjit Ghosh much useful to delineate the groundwater potential zone. [email protected] Many researchers in India and aboard have been successfully Indrajit Chowdhuri using this technique to identify groundwater potential zone. [email protected] Thematic layers have been made through Arc GIS software. Recently, the application of multi-criteria decision making 1 Department of Geography, The University of Burdwan, (MCDM) technique in GIS framework plays an important Bardhaman, West Bengal, India Vol.:(0123456789)1 3 221 Page 2 of 13 Applied Water Science (2020) 10:221 role in scientifc investigation in groundwater resource man- Database and methodology agement (Chen et al. 2011). The other areas where MCMD technique and GIS both play a vital role, are natural haz- Various types of data are presented here in the tabulated ard (Ozturk and Batuk 2011), agriculture (Cisneros et al. form which has been used for preparing the groundwater 2011) and forestry (Zeng et al. 2007). Analytic hierarchy potential zone in Purba Bardhaman district. The analyses process (AHP) by Saaty of MCMD is playing a vital role have been started after the collection of all the required to solve socioeconomic decision-making problems (Jhariya datasets. Numerous types of data (Table 1) and software et al. 2016; Pal et al. 2019; Das and Pal 2020). In the AHP like ArcGIS 10.3 and ERDAS IMAGINE 2014 have been model, priority is given not only to the single element, but used in this work. In this work, six criteria, i.e., lithology, also to the cluster of elements that are often needed (Saaty soil texture, rainfall, distance from river, surface water 1999). In this paper, the AHP model was successfully used body and land use land cover, have been taken into con- to assign relative importance to parameters that elucidate sideration to prepare groundwater potential zone. All the potential groundwater areas (Machiwal et al. 2015; Jhariya maps have been transformed into Universal Transverse et al. 2016; Dasho et al. 2017; Das et al. 2017; Chakrabortty Mercator (UTM) projection northern zone 45 datum WGS et al. 2018; Das et al. 2019). The main aim of this work is 1984 in ArcGIS software. Four thematic layers such as to identify the groundwater potential area of Purba Bardha- lithology, rainfall, distance from the river and soil texture man district through the application AHP method and GIS have been digitized and rectified from various sources technique. This study may be helpful in future planning for which are already mentioned in Table 1. We used the sustainable groundwater management which may help the ERDAS 9.0 software for satellite image processing. The people from water crisis. maximum likelihood classification method of supervised classification was applied for land use land cover map using the same Landsat 8 OLI satellite imagery of 2019 Study area and software. The surface water body has been extracted using the normalized difference water index (NDWI) The Purba Bardhaman district consisted of an alluvial method from the same satellite image in ArcGIS 10.3 plain. The study area is enclosed between 22° 15′ 08″ N software. There are various water extraction methods, and to 23° 15′ 17″ N latitudes and 87° 13′ 17 E to 88° 7′ 22″ one of them is the NDWI method which is used in this E longitudes (Fig. 1). In this district, the three major riv- paper. Equation of NDWI is as follows: ers are Ajay, Bhagirathi and Damodar, which are situated NDWI = (Green − NIR)∕(Green + NIR) on the north, east and south side of the district. The undu- lating lateritic topography is found in the Ausgram region, After preparation of all thematic layers, the AHP method which is part of the Paschim Bardhaman district. The study has been applied. Regarding this, the spatial distributions area is part of the tropical region. According to the 2011 of all geo-environmental variables are from diferent data census, the total population of the district was 48,35,532. sources. AHP is a semiquantitative approach. In the AHP Agriculture with a limited number of agricultural industries model, score is representing the importance of every indi- is a main occupation in this region. In this analysis, there vidual factor (Saaty 1977, 2000). The preference values are are 11 community blocks, i.e., Ketugram-I, Ketugram-II, applied for each factor following the importance scale of Bhatar, Raina-I, Raina-II, Kalna-II, Mongalkote, Katwa-II, AHP for the calculation of relative importance in association Katwa-I, Memari-II, Monteswar were identifed as semi- with the goal (Saaty 1977; Saaty and Vargas 2001). critical blocks (CGWB 2013) out of 23 community blocks, and there is a long-term trend in water level fuctuations Generation of groundwater potential zone (CGWB 2016). The central part of this study area received sufcient amount of rainfall which is categorized as high for this study region, i.e., above 1400 mm. The maximum Variable factor weights (Vi) and individual factor weights part of this study region encompases with the distribution (Fi) for each thematic layers have been assigned to delineate of 1200 to 1400 mm rainfall, whereas rest of the region has groundwater potential zone. The spatial amalgamation of all received below 1200 mm rainfall per year. map layers has been done using the raster calculator tool of ArcGIS 10.3 software version. Finally, a linear sum combi- nation method has been adopted for getting the groundwater potential zone in RS-GIS environment. 1 3 Applied Water Science (2020) 10:221 Page 3 of 13 221 Fig. 1 Location map 1 3 221 Page 4 of 13 Applied Water Science (2020) 10:221 Table 1 Sources of data Attribute Source Lithological Unit Geological Survey of India, Kolkata 2001 (Scale-1:2,50,000) Soil texture National Bureau of Soil Survey & Land Use Planning (NBSS&LUP), Kolkata [Soil Survey and Land Use Plan of Bardhaman District, West Bengal] Rainfall Central Ground Water Board, Government of India [Scale—1:1,000,000 Land use Land cover, LANDSAT 8, USGS Surface water body [(Path/Row: 138/44, Acquired date: 2019-01-29, Scene center time: 23:58:53Z) and (Path/Row: 139/44, Acquired date: 2018-12-11, Scene center time: 13:08:32Z)] Groundwater data Central Ground Water Board, Government of India Groundwater depth wells data India-WRIS webGIS, Water Resources Information System of India (Bardhaman District- 2018) GPZ = [(Liw*Liwi) + (STw*STwi) + (DfRw*DfRwi) soil and transportation of silt soil by the river.