Abstract:
Groundwater potential assessment is the process of measuring, collecting, and analyzing
relevant parameters on the quantity of groundwater resources for the better development and
management of water resources. There is limited information about the occurrence, distribution,
recharge, discharge, and factors that affect groundwater protection site selection. Finding a
systematic approach is required to minimize this knowledge gap. Therefore, the main objective
of this study is to evaluate and delineate the groundwater potential zone in Muger catchment,
Upper Blue Nile, and evaluate the effect of the land management factor of the area on the
distribution of groundwater potential, using geospatial techniques. Eight multi-influencing
elements such as, land use land cover (LULC), DEM, rainfall, geology data, soil type, drainage
density, slope, and lineament density, are used to develop groundwater potential. The land use
land cover (LULC) image of 2022 was generated from a land satellite and classified using the
ERDAS Imagine 2015. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to estimate the weight of
the parameters based on their relative value and percent of influence on groundwater potential
and recharge. The consistency ratio for the weights assigned to each parameter was found to be
0.0785, which is less than 0.1, indicating that the weights assigned to each parameter are
appropriate. A knowledge base ranking of 1 to 5 was assigned to each layer based on the
importance of each layer for groundwater potential. Using the raster calculator feature of
ArcGIS software, all the theme maps were combined to produce a composite groundwater
potential map of the research area. Based on its groundwater potential availability rank and
class, the created groundwater potential map has four ranks: 2, 3, 4, and 5. Its classes are Low,
Moderate, High, and Very High, respectively. The groundwater potential zone (GWPZ) area
coverage of the study area was identified as very high (2.79%, or 192.92 km2
), high (73.79%, or
5114.08 km2
), moderate (23.14%, or1600.054 km2
), and low (0.0867%, or 5.99 km2
). The
validity of the identified groundwater potential maps was done, by cross-checking with the
existing borehole data collected from the catchment, as evidenced by the prediction accuracy
was 71.42%. Reflects that the method applied for the present study produced significantly
reliable and precise results. In addition to GWPZ evaluation the effect of land management
factor on GWPZ was evaluated. Thus, based on the slope value (>30%) of LULC in the study
area was changed from agricultural land to vegetation area (351 km2
). Due to this change of
LULC, the groundwater potential zone of the study area increased by (0.44% or 30.14 km2
) to a
good groundwater potential area. This implies that the groundwater potential zone of the
catchment was influenced by land management practices, and the method is effective in doing
such an investigation.
