Assessment of Groundwater Potential in the Kalahandi District of Odisha (India) Using Remote Sensing, Geographic Information System and Analytical Hierarchy Process [Erratum: December 2020, Vol.48(12), p.1755]

Groundwater has become the ultimate source for domestic consumption of many urban and rural populations in the world due to unavailability of sufficient good-quality surface water. Because of high spatiotemporal variation in occurrence and distribution of this diminishing resource, understanding its nature is important for sustainable development and use. Geospatial technology has made this tedious task simpler by offering a new avenue for groundwater potential zoning. The present study was attempted to identify groundwater potential zones in the Kalahandi district of Odisha with the application of remote sensing, geographic information system and analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Various features such as geomorphology, land use/land cover, soil, land slope, drainage and lineament density and dynamic groundwater were assigned weights according to the Saaty’s scale by considering their influences on groundwater potential. The weights were then normalized using AHP and eigenvector technique. ArcGIS 10.6.1 was used to integrate all the features for developing the groundwater potential map of the district. The area was demarcated into five groundwater prospect zones, namely ‘very good’, ‘good’, ‘moderate’, ‘poor’ and ‘very poor’ covering 19, 6, 34, 28 and 13% of the district, respectively. Thus, it can be inferred that there is ample scope of groundwater development as 59% of the area comes under moderate to very good groundwater zones. On the other hand, suitable strategies can be devised for groundwater augmentation in poor to very poor zones. This study will be useful in formulating suitable strategies for the management of groundwater resources of the district.