Trend Analysis of Groundwater Levels and Assessment of Regional Groundwater Drought: Ghataprabha River Basin, India

Groundwater drought is a relatively new concept, particularly in the Indian subcontinent, where groundwater levels are declining rapidly. The present study focuses on understanding the trends in groundwater levels and evaluates regional groundwater drought characteristics in the drought-prone Ghataprabha river basin, India. Cluster analysis was performed on the long-term monthly groundwater levels to classify the wells, and the Mann-Kendall test was accomplished to investigate the annual and seasonal groundwater-level trends. Standardized Groundwater level Index (SGI) was used to evaluate groundwater drought. Significant decreasing trends were observed in more than 61% of the wells in the study area with average decline of 0.21m. Results of the SGI analysis showed that the wells of clusters 1 and 2 experienced recurrent droughts, which can be attributed to diminishing rainfall and over-exploitation of groundwater resources. The outcome of this study provides valuable information about the long-term behavior of regional groundwater levels which, in turn, helps to establish an operative groundwater management strategy for upcoming droughts.