Abstract:
Groundwater plays a pivotal role in India, particularly in hard rock and
semi-hard rock regions of the country to support domestic, agricultural, and industrial
requirements of water in addition to environmental needs. Rising demands of
groundwater for rapidly increasing population, developmental activities and urbanization
have resulted in unsystematic over extractions of groundwater that led to the
decline of groundwater levels in many parts of the world including India. Many areas
have even no proper groundwater development program that has given rise to problems
of waterlogging and salinity. Approximately, 25% area of the Indo-Gangetic
basin has saline water with TDS more than 1000 mg/L (as per WHO 2004) or conductivity
more than 1500 μS/cm. In Indo-Gangetic basin, the problems of salinity
in Indus and upper Gangetic parts covering northwestern states of India are different
than the salinity of coastal areas. The major problem of groundwater salinity in the
northwestern states, namely Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, and Rajasthan, is of terrestrial
origin. The order of salinity affected state, in terms of magnitude, is Rajasthan >
Haryana > Punjab > Delhi. Over-abstraction of groundwater can also spread saline
water into the freshwater zones due to the presence of evaporative sequences from
deeper to shallower depths.Modern irrigation practices with dense canal distribution
network may lead to very shallow water tables, hence may increase waterlogging
and salinization due to the leakage. The impacts of groundwater salinity largely hamper
the crop productivity and thereby can affect the food security. Management of
groundwater salinity is thus essential for the sustainability of food security and to
remediate health hazards and ecosystem services in the northwestern region of India.
To obviate the problem and for better management of groundwater resources in the
area, one has to know the interaction between the aquifers and surface water sources.