148 / 2015-04-29 03:20:35

Assessment of aquifer vulnerability to surface contaminants using GIS: A case study of district Kot Adhu, Pakistan

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An efficient approach to for the assessment assessing ground-water aquifer sensitivity the DRASTIC model in Geographic Information System (GIS) environment was applied. The Kot Addu was selected based on the intensity of the area's pesticide applications and the availability of information required for analysis. The DRASTIC model is used by combining data sets that describe the depth to groundwater, recharge rates, aquifer material, soils composition, land slope, vadose zone materials, and hydraulic conductivity for study area. GIS layers were developed for each of the DRASTIC parameters and combined into a natural sensitivity coverage. The resulting vulnerability values were grouped into three categories: moderate-indicating that the ground-water aquifer is very well protected and risk of contamination from nonpoint sources is very low; high-the groundwater aquifer is much more susceptible to contamination due to several hydrologic conditions; and very high-all hydrologic parameters are conducive to the rapid transport of contamination to the ground-water aquifer. Results indicate that, most part of the study area fall under moderate vulnerability zone, eastern part is high vulnerable, while smaller portion is under very high vulnerability zone.