Analysis of groundwater drought characteristics of Damoh district in Bundelkhand using groundwater drought index

Abstract

Drought is a natural disastrous phenomenon that occurs due to the continuous reduction of rainfall over a short or a long period of time. A deficit in precipitation result in deficit of groundwater recharge, which leads to lower groundwater table and turn in groundwater drought. This is a challenging problem in Bundelkhand region of the Central India, where people mostly suffer from groundwater drought condition. Bearma basin is one of the considerable groundwater resource fields of Bundelkhand in Madhya Pradesh, which is Sub-basin of Ken River. In the present study the Bearma basin has been selected with the objective to analyze the groundwater drought condition in Damoh district by using Groundwater Drought Index (GDI). The 26 years (1984-2010) quarterly ground water levels of 59 observation wells falling in and around of Damoh district has been used. The GDI for all observation wells were computed with the help of ground water level of each stations. With the help of temporal variations of GDI for each observation wells, the groundwater drought characteristics of the basin falling under Damoh district were analyzed. Result showed that the maximum number of 9 frequency drought events occurred at Fatehpur, Hatta and Bari-kalan with total durations varying between 83 to 134 months and total severity varying between -19.40 to -27.96. The cumulative groundwater drought duration of 134 months has been observed at Devron followed by 116 months at Kusumi. The overall drought intensity in the observation wells was found -0.38.