Delineation of groundwater potential zones in Theni district, Tamil Nadu, using remote sensing, GIS and MIF techniques

Integration of remote sensing data and the geographical information system (GIS) for the exploration of groundwater resources has become a breakthrough in the field of groundwater research, which assists in assessing, monitoring, and conserving groundwater resources. In the present paper, various groundwater potential zones for the assessment of groundwater availability in Theni district have been delineated using remote sensing and GIS techniques. Survey of India toposheets and IRS-1C satellite imageries are used to prepare various thematic layers viz. lithology, slope, land-use, lineament, drainage, soil, and rainfall were transformed to raster data using feature to raster converter tool in ArcGIS. 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 get the groundwater potential zones. 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 found to be helpful in better planning and management of groundwater resources. (C) 2011, China University of Geosciences (Beijing) and Peking University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.