Geospatial Groundwater Potential Zone Mapping using Geological, Remote Sensing Data and Multi-Criteria Analysis Techniques

The purpose of this paper is to assess the potential of groundwater regions in the northwestern part of Iran's central province by integrating satellite imaging and geological data. For the possibility of groundwater identification, a comprehensive understanding of the criteria is necessary, which, in addition to satellite imagery of nine effective geological data, was employed in this work. All of the thematic layers were given weights based on their relative importance, and their normalized weights were determined after the ranking using the pair-wise comparison matrix of the analytical hierarchy process. The weighted data were then merged to generate a groundwater potential map in three distinct conditions. This map revealed five different kinds of groundwater potential: very good, good, medium, moderate, and very low. According to the findings, 14.51% of the region has extremely low groundwater potential, 7.9% has poor, 21.10% has average, 34.50% as well, and 22.50% has very good groundwater potential. Zones with no promise were linked to places with maximum heights and volcanic and granite rocks, and higher potential zonation is more consistent with alluvial deposits and coarse alluvial deposits. The placement of the piezometric wells was used for validation findings, which revealed that 74% of the wells are in locations with extremely high potential. Although there are few of them in other areas, this could be due to the high slope and water outcrop. The obtained results show that the majority of the groundwater area is distributed in the west, southwest, southeast, and center of the research region.