Evaluation of groundwater potential zones in Krishnagiri District, Tamil Nadu using MIF Technique

3 Abstract: Increase in the demand of water for industrial and human purposes has brought an awareness to save ground water resources which is the primary source. Remote sensing data and the Geographical Information System (GIS) can be integrated for the exploration of groundwater resources and it becomes a breakthrough in the field of groundwater research, which assists in assessing, monitoring, and conserving groundwater resources. An attempt has been made in the present study to delineate groundwater potential zones of Krishnagiri district, Tamil Nadu using remote sensing and GIS techniques. Survey of India toposheets and LISS-IV satellite imageries are used to prepare various thematic layers viz. slope, land-use/land-cover, drainage, soil, geology, geomorphology and rainfall. The thematic layers that are in vector are converted to raster using feature to raster converter tool in ArcGIS10. The raster maps of these factors are allocated a fixed score and weight computed from Multi Influencing Factor (MIF) technique. Moreover, each weighted thematic layer is statistically computed to yield a groundwater potential zone map of the study area. The groundwater potential zones thus obtained were divided into four categories, viz., very poor, poor, good, and very good zones. The result depicts the groundwater potential zones in the study area and creates awareness in better planning and management of groundwater resources.