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Delineation of Potential Sites for Water Harvesting Structuresusing Remote Sensing and GIS

M. Girish Kumar . A. K. Agarwal . Rameshwar Bali

Received: 12 February 2008 / Accepted: 20 September 2008

Keywords Rain water harvesting site suitability . Remote sensing . GIS

M.G. Kumar1 . A.K. Agarwal2 . R. Bali1 (�)1Centre of Advance Study in Geology,University of Lucknow,Lucknow – 226007, India2Remote Sensing Application Centre,U.P. Janakipuram,Lucknow – 226021, India

e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract Availability of groundwater varies spatiallyand temporally depending upon the terrain. Thescarcity of water affects the environmental anddevelopmental activities of an area. Construction ofsmall water harvesting structures across streams/watersheds is gaining momentum in recent years. Inthe present study, potential sites for construction ofrainwater harvesting structures in the Bakharwatershed of Mirzapur District, Uttar Pradesh, Indiahave been identified by using remote sensing

and GIS techniques. Various thematic maps suchas Landuse/Landcover, geomorphology andlineaments, etc. were prepared using remote sensing.These layers along with geology and drainage wereintegrated using GIS techniques to derive suitablewater harvesting sites. Each theme was assigned aweightage depending on its influence on groundwater recharge (for example weightages 20,18,15,25,25and 0 were assigned to geomorphology, landuse,geology, lineament, drainage and road and villagesrespectively). Each class or unit in the map wasassigned a knowledge based ranking of one to fourdepending on its significance in storage andtransmittance of groundwater, and these values weremultiplied with layer weightage to form score. Theaverage score for excellent region is greater than 200,for good 121 to 200, for moderate 81 to 121 and theother polygon having value less than 80 (excludingzero) were assigned to poor category. The final mapshowing different categories of suitability sites forwater harvesting structures such as Check dams,

J. Indian Soc. Remote Sens. (December 2008) 36:323–334

Photonirvachak 123

RESEARCH ARTICLE

324 J. Indian Soc. Remote Sens. (December 2008) 36:323–334

Contour bunding, Recharge pits, Wells and Contourtrenching have been suggested.

Introduction

Water, one of the most essential resources in ourday-to-day life is depleting faster in rural as well asurban areas mainly because of increase inagricultural and domestic demands. In waterresources planning, ground water is attracting anever-increasing interest due to scarcity of goodquality sub-surface water and growing need of waterfor domestic, agricultural, and industrial uses. In adensely populated country like India, ground-waterresource is in high demand. Continuous failure ofmonsoon, increasing demand and over exploitationleads to depletion of ground-water level, which inturn tends to increase both the investment and theoperational costs. This problem could be sorted outto certain extent by artificially recharging thepotential aquifers. In hard rock terrains, availabilityof groundwater is of limited extent. Occurrence ofgroundwater in such rocks is essentially confined tofractured and weathered horizons. Efficientmanagement and planning of groundwater in theseareas is of the utmost importance. Extensive hydro-geological studies have been carried out by severalworkers in delineating groundwater potential zonesin hard rock terrain (Agarwal et al., 1992; Rao et al.,2001). For delineating the groundwater potential/prospective zones, Geographical information system(GIS) has been found to be an effective tool. Inrecent years, use of satellite remote sensing dataalong with GIS, topographical maps, collecteralinformation and limited field checks, has made iteasier to establish the base line information ongroundwater prospective zones (Saraf and Jain,1993; Krishnamurthy et al., 2000; Agarwal et al.,2004). Most of the above studies were mainly carriedout to identify areas having groundwater potential,but very little work has been done to identify zones

suitable for artificial recharge (Saraf and Choudhury,1998; Agarwal et al., 2005). Like delineation ofgroundwater potential/prospect zones, delineation ofpotential sites for artificial recharge is also governedby several factors such as geology, geomorphology,lineaments, landuse/cover, roads map, villagelocation map, permeability, soil depth, drainageintensity, soil texture, water holding capacity andphysiography. The overall methodology involvesextraction and generation of various thematic mapseither through satellite images or through existingrecords and field survey maps. The next step dealswith classification of all these parameters into‘suitable’ classes and assignment of ‘suitable’ ranksto these classes, weights to the parameters, andfinally integration of all the ranked and weighedparameters in a GIS environment. Subsequently, thearea is classified into poor, moderate, good andexcellent sites suitable for the rainwater harvesting.

Study area

The present studies have been carried out inBakhar watershed lying between Latitude 240 45' to240 56' N and Longitude 820 29' to 820 56' E falling inthe Survey of India (SOI) Topographical sheet No.63 L/9 and 63 L/13 (Fig. 1), with an area of around560 km2. The average annual rainfall with in thewatershed is 747.52 mm and the maximum averageannual temperature is 32.10C (Anonymous, 2003).The topography of the study area, in general, isgently undulating dissected plateau. The Quaternarysediments are deposited over the sandstones. Thepresent drainage network of the Bakhar watershedhas been delineated using satellite data. In theSandstone terrain, the drainage pattern is dendriticand in the Quaternary sediments region thedrainages are sub-dendritic to sub-parallel. It isobserved that in the Bakhar watershed, newdrainages have come up and some streams havechanged their course in the northern (Gopalpur) and

325J. Indian Soc. Remote Sens. (December 2008) 36:323–334

eastern (Rajgarh) side. The satellite data has alsorevealed that some drainage lines have disappearedand new tanks (surface water bodies) have come upin the recent times. Field visits to these placesconfirm the same. Roads and settlement layers havebeen derived from Land Record Department, DistrictMirzapur and were updated using the satelliteimages.

photographs and digitally enhanced products of theIndian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS, LISS-III)sensor. Arcview 8 software package was used forcreation of digital database, data integration andanalysis. All thematic maps were digitized (incontinuous mode in the vector format and thedigitized values were then edited). Differentcategories of polygons in the thematic maps were

Fig. 1

Methodology

Basic technical guidelines provided by theIntegrated Mission for Sustainable Development(IMSD) and Indian National Committee onHydrology (INCOH) have been adopted for selectingsites for rainwater harvesting structures. Thethematic maps depicting the geomorphology,landuse/landcover, road, drainage and lineamentswere prepared using 1:50,000 scale geocoded

labelled separately. The suitable weights wereassigned to each thematic feature after consideringtheir characteristics upon their influence overrecharge. Knowledge based weight assignment wascarried out for each features and they wereintegrated and analysed by using the weightedaggregation method (ESRI, 1988). The different unitsin each theme were assigned ranking from 1 to 4 onthe basis of their significance with reference to theirsite selection for installing rainwater-harvesting


structures. In this ranking, ‘0’ denotes the restrictedarea (e.g. forest region) and no structure is proposedfor that area, 1 denotes poorly favourable zones, 2denotes moderately favourable, 3 denotes highlyfavourable and 4 denotes excellent zone for siteselection for rain water harvesting structures. Thefinal score of a theme is equal to the product of therank and weightage. From the composite layer, thedelineation of site suitability analysis was made bygrouping the polygons into different prospect zonesi.e. excellent, good, moderate, poor and not suitable.

Geological set-up

It is a well-established fact that geological set-upof an area plays a vital role in the distribution andoccurrence of groundwater (Krishnamurthy andSrinivas, 1995). The geological set-up andstratigraphy of the Vindhyan Super group in the Sonvalley, Central India was earlier proposed by Auden(1933) and later on revised by Prakash and Dalela

(1982). The Bakhar watershed is dominated bycompact sandstones of Kaimur series. At someplaces, especially in the northern and eastern partsof the watershed, it is overlain by Quaternaryalluvium (Fig. 2).

Geomorphological set-up

Geomorphology of an area is one of the mostimportant features in evaluating the groundwaterpotential and prospect. The geomorphology as suchcontrols the subsurface movement of groundwater.Considering the importance, different geomor-phological features are mapped using the IRSsatellite imagery (Fig. 3). Various geomorphicclasses/units identified as per the guidelines laiddown by National Remote Sensing Centre,Hyderabad (NRSC Technical guidelines, 1995). Thedata has been duly validated during field visits. Themajor landforms are as follows:

Fig. 2


Dissected plateaus

These units are highly fractured and weathered andshow the formation of laterites. They show lightreddish tone and cover the southern part of thewatershed.

Pediments

Generally these units have low permeability andinfiltration rate and are noticed around the dissectedplateau region and drainage divide area of thewatershed. These units show patches of lightbrownish tone with irregular shape and size.

Buried pediplains

Buried pediplains are formed due to coalescence ofburied pediments having thick overburden ofweathered materials. These landforms are charac-terized by high porosity, permeability and infiltrationrate and as such the groundwater prospects of theburied pediplain are good. In the FCC these unitsshow dark blue to light blue tone and most of theeastern and northern part of the watershed.

Valley fills

Valley fills are mostly structurally controlled and thematerials are mainly sheet wash from the plateau area

Fig. 3


and pediplains. Valley fills consist of both alluvialand colluvial materials and are mostly identifiedalong the various streams of the watershed. Theseare identified by characteristic bright spectralsignatures in the false colour composite of band 2,3, 4. This geomorphic unit acts as good prospectivezone for groundwater development.

Eroded pediplain

This unit is seen along the streams of high and lowlying areas. These landforms give a bright red tonein satellite data due to the presence of vegetation.

Lineament distribution

A lineament is defined as a large scale linearstructural feature. Such features may represent deepseated faults, master fractures and joints sets,drainage lines and boundary lines of different rockformations. Lineaments provide the pathways forgroundwater movement and are hydrogeologicallyvery important (Sankar, 2002). Lineaments areimportant in rocks where secondary permeability,

porosity and intergranular characteristics togetherinfluence groundwater movements. The lineamentintersection areas are considered as goodgroundwater potential zones. The combination offractures and topographically low grounds can alsoserve as the best aquifer horizons (Rao, 1992).Lineaments have been identified on images throughvisual interpretation by comparing spatial variationin tone, colour, texture, association, etc. (Fig. 4).25 m area on either side of lineaments andintersections of lineaments are considered to befavourable for accumulation of groundwater.

Land use / Land cover

The major landuse pattern include cropland, fallowland, forest area, forest plantations, Barren rockyarea, land with scrubs and without scrubs. Croplandincludes land for growing the Rabi and Kharif cropsand have been identified by the light medium redtone, fine/medium texture varying in size, oftenrectangular in shape. These are excellent site for thegroundwater exploration. The forest and forest

Fig. 4


plantation gives light reddish brown tone with whitepatches and fine to medium texture with irregularshape and varying size. Although, these areas havegood ground water prospects, these have beenpurposefully categorized as poor, keeping in mindthat these areas are generally restricted and are notpermitted for any ground water exploitation activity.Lands without scrub have been rated lower than landwith scrub for recharge, since vegetation coverpromotes infiltration (Fig. 5).

structures depends on various factors, which can beintegrated by GIS techniques (Novaline et al., 1993).To assess the groundwater prospect in an area, allthe different polygons in the thematic maps werelabelled separately. Knowledge based weightages areassigned to each thematic features after consideringtheir importance with respect to groundwater. All thethematic maps are integrated in GIS environment andthe polygons have been regrouped into differentclassess.

Fig. 5

GIS Analysis

Check dams, contour bunding, recharge pits andwells and contour trenching provide a good measureof rainwater harvesting structures in the hard rockterrains by arresting run-off and increasing thesurface area of infiltration. Suitability of these

Weight Assignment

Thematic layers viz, geomorphology, geology,landuse, lineaments buffer zone, drainage, road andvillage location map have been considered forsite suitability analysis. Based on the availableknowledge on the role of each of these parameters


in controlling the occurrence, storage anddistribution of groundwater, weightages of 20, 15, 18,25, 25 and 0 were assigned for geomorphology,geology, landuse, lineament, drainage and roads andvillages respectively. Again each of these layers hasfurther been classified into different classes. Each ofthe classes, based on its ability to facilitate waterinfiltration has been given ranks from 1 to 4. Finally,scores have been calculated as the product of

the weightage and rank e.g. under the class geo-morphology (wt. 20), valley fills have been assignedthe rank 4. The final score of 80 has been calculatedby the multiplication of the rank and weightage ofthe class (Table 1).

The thematic layers were integrated with oneanother through GIS using the weighted aggregationmethod. The following order of sequence wasadopted to derive the final integrated map.

Table 1 Rank, weightage and scores for the various themes with respect to site suitability analysis

Geomorphic Unit Weightage - 20 Landuse Unit Weightage - 18

Class Rank Score Class Rank Score

Valley fills 4 80 Kharif 4 72

Eroded pediplains shallow 4 80 Rabi 3 57

Eroded pediplains Medium 3 60 Kharif + Rabi 4 72

Burried pediplain – Deep 4 80 Fallow land 3 57

Burried pediplain – Moderate 3 60 Land with scrub 2 36

Burried pediplain – Shallow 2 40 Land without scrub 2 36

Pediments 2 40 Barren rocky 1 18

Pediments (W) 3 60 Dense evergreen forest 0 0

Dissected upper plateau - Laterite 1 20 Deciduous forest 0 0

Dissected lower plateau - Laterite 1 20 Open forest 0 0

Dissected upper plateau 1 20 Scrub forest 0 0

Dissected lower plateau 1 20 Open forest 0 0

Geology Unit Weightage - 15 Crop land forest 0 0

Class Rank Score Guilled land 1 18

Compact sandstone 1 15 Water bodies 0 0

Compact sandstone (Weathered) 2 30 Settlements 0 0

Laterite 2 30 Reservoir/river 0 0

Alluvium 4 60 Settlements 0 0

Drainage Unit Weightage - 25

Class Rank Score

Lineaments Unit Weightage – 25 Drainage (50m buffer) 4 100

Class Rank Score Road & Village Unit Weightage - 0

Lineament (50 m buffer) 4 100 Class Rank Score

Road & Village (50m buffer) 0 0


Geology (R1) + Geomorphology (R2) = S1S1 + Landuse/landcover (R3) = S2S2 + Lineament of 50m buffer (R5) = S3S3 + Drainage of 50 m buffer (R4) = S4S4 x Road and village layer (R6) = S5

In the first step, geology (R1) and geomorphology(R2) layers were integrated by choosing the unionoption. The integrated layer (S1), comprises 68polygons of the geology layer and 215 polygons ofthe geomorphology layer and after union it resultedin 674 polygons. Adding these two layers, derivedthe weight of each polygon in the integrated layer(S1). The polygons in S1 have a maximum value of140 and minimum of 35. In the next step, the S1 layercontaining 674 polygons was intersected with theland use layer (R3), which had 339 polygons. In thisstep, the integrated layer S2 (9209 polygons) wasgenerated by adding lithology, geomorphology andlanduse layers. These polygons have a maximumweight of 212 and minimum of 35. The S2 layer wasintegrated with polygons of the lineament buffer zone(R4). In this integrated layer (S3), (13458 polygonswere generated) having a maximum value of 312 andminimum of 35.

Layer R5 involving polygons made around thedrainage (buffer zone) was integrated with layer S3by the union option. In this layer (S4) there are 24236polygons which have a maximum value 412 andminimum of 35. The village and road layers (R6)having zero weightage were integrated with S4, usingmultiplication option. The polygons in the integratedlayer (S5) had retained the same values of S4 exceptthe null value of road and village. The polygons inthe integrated layer (S5) contain the composite detailof all the thematic layers together numerically havingmaximum weight of 412 and minimum weight of zero.

Results and discussion

Grouping of polygons of high ranks of all thethematic layers has helped in delineating the sites

that are excellent for construction of waterharvesting structures. Those polygons, whichhave weight greater than 200 in the final integratedlayer have been, classified as excellent sites forrainwater harvesting. The polygons classified asgood category have the weights between 121 and200 and as of Moderate category have the weightsbetween 81 and 120. All other polygons that haveweight less than 80 (excluding zero) were groupedas a poor category. Polygons having zero weightshave been separated out (not suitable category) asthese have been classified as reserve forests, roadsand villages. Thematic map (Fig. 6) showing the sitessuitable for construction of rainwater harvestingstructures suggests that the drainage area and theeastern part of the study area are most suitable forconstruction of rainwater harvesting structures.

Proposed rain water harvesting structures forBakhar watershed

The site suitability analysis (Fig. 6) has helped inlocating the suitable sites for the water harvestingstructures. Based on the above classification as wellas depth to water table map and terrain conditions,a map suggesting the type of structures to be builtat various locations has been prepared (Fig. 7). Theproposed structures are check dams, contourbundings, contour trenchings, nala bandhs, rechargepits and wells. The numbers of structures proposedin the study area are given (Table 2). The key factorsfor selecting a particular structure at a given site areas follows:

Check dam

(i) The check dam is essentially on the drainagecoarse, that may be situated on either 1st or 2nd orderof drainage; (ii) The preference for this structure isgiven where drainage is narrow and straight; (iii) Thestructure of check dam should be made so as toregulate the water during monsoon and non


Fig. 6

Fig. 7


monsoon period; (iii) The selected site may belocated in the vicinity of the habitation and its waterstorage away from the surrounding lands of irrigationpotential (as much as possible); (iv) The structureof check dam are proposed at the hydrogeomorphicunit of buried pediplain medium (BBP-M), buriedpediplain deep (BPP-D) and valley fills (VF) near alineament.

Percolation tank/Recharging pond/Injection well/Recharge wells, etc.

(i) The site may be located immediately downstreamof the check dam; (ii) The deepening of tank shouldbe adequate to recharge the shallow aquifer; (iii)Water should be maintained round the year; (iv) Itmay be located on the side of drainage but not inriver bed.

Contour bunding

(i) Site may be located at the highly protected areas;(ii) Should be constructed in those landform unitswhich need irrigation but have chances of soilerosion; (iii) The gradient of land should be low orminimum.

Contour trenching

In sloping regions, contour trenching arrestsRainwater runoff.

The above structures have been proposed for theplanned development of water resources of Bakharwatershed area.

Conclusion

The site suitability analysis for locating the rainwater harvesting structures using GIS analysis hasan added advantage over conventional survey. Themultilayer integration viz., geomorphology, landuse,geology, lineament, drainage (Buffer) and road andvillage buffer gives smaller suitability units as acomposite layer. The interlayer ranking andintralayer weightage further intensify theinterpolation. Interpretation of thematic layers fromRemote Sensing data was assigned various classesand ranking. The composite layer, obtained bymultiplication of the layers weightage and rank asscore, were further averaged into four classes ofExcellent (> 200), Good (121 – 200), Moderate (81 –120) and Poor (< 80). The suitability of check dam,

Table 2 Proposed groundwater harvesting sites

Sl. No Location of Groundwater Harvesting Sites Suggested rain water(nearest village name) structures

1 Ghori, Riksa Khurd, Madaria, Thakkarnagar, Padaria Khurd, Gopalpur,Kutwa, Naudihawan, Harihara, Sobhi, Smera, Raikara, Imliya chaurasi,Dhauraha, Kuri, Rampur, Bishunpur, Rampur Barho, Karkauli, Saranga,Silhata, Bandardewa

Check dam

2 Amoi, Sugapankh Khurd, Gangapur, Hinuta, Khachahan, Lurkutia,Nakti Purwa, Patehra Khurd, Khataua, Ataura, Lahas, Dadhia, Devpurwa,Daranagar Pachakhara

Contour bunding

3 Kalwari, Ganeshpur, Karma Railwaystation, Sirsijethi, Saranga Recharge pits & wells

4 Khamharia, Tikuriya, Sirsijethi, Saranga, Baguhra, Bar, Dhauraha, Dhanwal,Jamoi Kalan, Hariahara, Raikara, Kalwari

Contour trenching


contour bunding/trenching and recharge pits andwells were suggested accordingly near to villages.Out of total 136 villages of Bakhar watershed 22villages were found suitable for check dams, 14 forcontour bunding, 5 for recharge pits and 12 forcontour trenching and rest are found not suitable forany of these water harvesting structure. This bringsthe finer level classification of site suitabilityanalysis.

Acknowledgement The authors are thankful to theHead, Centre of Advanced study in Geology, LucknowUniversity, Lucknow and Director, RSAC, UP for pro-viding working facilities.

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