A systematic planning of groundwater exploitation using modern techniques is essential for proper utilization and management of this precious but shrinking natural resource. With the advent of powerful and highspeed personal computers, efficient techniques for water management have evolved, of which Geoinformatics technology includes RS (Remote Sensing), GIS (Geographic Information System) and GPS (Global Positioning System) are of great significance. In the present study, an attempt has been made to delineate possible groundwater potential zones in the Ghataprabha sub basin of Krishna river, Karnataka using Geoinformatics technology. The thematic layers considered in this study are lithology, landform, drainage density, recharge, soil, land slope and surface water body, which were prepared using the Google Earth imagery and conventional data. All these themes and their individual features were then assigned weights according to their relative importance in groundwater occurrence and the corresponding normalized weights were obtained based on the Saaty's analytical hierarchy process. The thematic layers were finally integrated using AutoDeskMAP and MapInfo GIS software to yield a groundwater potential zone map of the study area. Thus, three different groundwater potential zones were identified, namely ‘good’, ‘moderate’ and ‘poor’. Moreover, the average annually exploitable groundwater reserve in the good zone was estimated to be 915 million cubic meter (MCM), whereas it is 381.25 915 MCM for the moderate zone and 228.75 MCM for the poor zone. Finally, it is concluded that the Geoinformatics technology are very efficient and useful for the identification of groundwater potential zones.
Geoinformatics, GIS, semiarid, remote sensing, groundwater
