Abstract:
The changes in human population often correspond with change in land use, including expansion of
urban areas, agriculture and increasing industrialization, which necessitate increasing the available
amount of drinking water. As the
surface water sources are under the pressure of pollution, it has become necessary to use
groundwater at an increasing rate. Groundwater recharge can be abundant in the alluvial plains
where the urban areas are often located. Such areas can face danger of pollution of groundwater and
the changes in land use are likely to result in change in groundwater quality. Keeping these aspects in
view, it was planned to development a groundwater water quality index in the Ganga-Yamuna
interfluve area of northern India, The objective of the present study is to develop the Index of Aquifer
Water Quality (IAWQ) inside the Geographic information system (GIS) environment, which can be
used by the field investigators and modeler’s in assessing the groundwater vulnerability. The formula
to estimate the IAWQ index is adopted from the procedure suggested Melloul and Collin (1998). The
procedure developed for this involves weights assigned to these 8 parameters as per their analytical
hierarchy in violating the (drinking water) standards and not as an arbitrary means (as taken by
Melloul and Collin). The suggested procedure can be extending to include more number of chemical
parameters as necessitate in individual case studies. In the modified procedure presented in the
present study, the number of measured chemical parameters n is taken as 8 (Cd, Mn, Pb, Fe, NO3-,
Total Alkalinity, TDS and Ca2+) as against n=2 (chloride and nitrate) as taken in the Melloul and
Collin’s work
