Abstract

The increase in water demand due to increase in anthropogenic activities and changes in the hydrological phenomenon has led to water scarcity. The groundwater exploration, utilization, management and recharging by creation of appropriate water harvesting structure is an important aspect for its sustainable management. This current study was carried out for Ghaggar river basin to delineate groundwater potential zones using analytical hierarchical process based multi criteria decision analysis followed by identification of suitable sites and structures for water harvesting. The thematic layers for Landuse landcover, drainage density, soil texture, geomorphology, slope, lineament density and runoff were prepared and weights were assigned to each thematic layer. The weights were than normalized using the analytical hierarchical process based on their characteristic and relationship with groundwater recharge. Finally, the groundwater prospect zones were delineated by integrating the thematic maps using the weighted sum overlay analysis tool in ArcGIS 10.5. The areal distribution of the groundwater potential reveals that 0.02, 36.55, 43.18, 19.29 and 0.96 % falls under very poor, poor, moderate, good and very good groundwater potential category, respectively. The groundwater potential map was validated using the existing well data. The resultant groundwater potential zones falling in good to very good zones were integrated with slope and stream order as per the Integrated Mission for Sustainable Development (IMSD) guidelines and three types of water harvesting structures were suggested i.e. check dam (24), percolation tank (27) and farm ponds (50).