Groundwater Contamination Assessment Using GIS and Remote Sensing Techniques

Abstract

Groundwater contamination has emerged as a critical environmental concern in India, threatening drinking water safety and public health. This study assesses groundwater contamination using Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) techniques, with the objective of mapping spatial distribution of contaminants, evaluating groundwater vulnerability, and determining the Water Quality Index (WQI) across selected contamination-prone regions of India. The methodology integrates satellite-derived data from Landsat-8 OLI and Sentinel-2, combined with field-collected hydrochemical data analyzed through the DRASTIC vulnerability model and weighted arithmetic WQI within an ArcGIS 10.8 framework. It is hypothesized that areas with intensive agricultural and industrial land use exhibit significantly higher groundwater contamination levels. Results reveal that approximately 55% of the studied area falls under poor to unfit water quality categories, with Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) ranging from 252 to 2065 mg/L and fluoride concentrations exceeding the WHO permissible limit of 1.5 mg/L in 43–49% of samples. The DRASTIC model identified high vulnerability zones concentrated near urban-industrial corridors and intensively irrigated agricultural belts. The study concludes that integrated GIS-RS approaches provide robust, cost-effective frameworks for groundwater contamination assessment, enabling spatially explicit decision-making for sustainable groundwater management in India.