Decision support system for sustainable groundwater management in crystalline hard rocks: implications for sugarcane agriculture, Southern India

• Published in: Environmental monitoring and assessment Vol. 194; no. 12; p. 918
• Main Authors: Mizan, Syed Adil, Sonkamble, Sahebrao, Sharadha, Adarshya, Wajihuddin, Md, Roy, Sumit, Dhar, Murli
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.12.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Agriculture; Aquifer systems; Aquifers; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Cells; Decision support systems; Deep wells; Drought; Drought conditions; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecology; Ecotoxicology; Electrical resistivity; Environment; Environmental Management; Environmental monitoring; Environmental science; Geology; Groundwater; Groundwater budget; Groundwater levels; Groundwater management; Hydrogeology; Modelling; Monitoring/Environmental Analysis; Pumping; Pumping rates; Robustness (mathematics); Sugarcane; Sustainability management; Tomography; Vulnerability; Water consumption; Water levels; Watersheds; India; Sugarcane agrarian; Hydro-geophysics; Groundwater irrigation; Decision support tool; Granitic aquifer; India
• ISSN: 0167-6369; 1573-2959
• DOI: 10.1007/s10661-022-10641-4

India is the second largest sugarcane-producing nation with water footprints ~ 104 BCM/year of which 80% met from groundwater of deep wells. The large-scale groundwater management practices were found mostly untenable affecting the sugarcane agrarian and associated sectors. We developed a cell-level (2 km × 2 km) decision support system employing the integrated hydro-geophysical investigations in sugarcane agro-watershed (399 km 2 ) beset over granitic aquifer systems of Tattihalla River watershed, Southern India. The refined hydrogeological conceptual model derived from electrical resistivity tomography and groundwater level (head) has been accounted into the numerical modeling. The model was run on transient mode for four stress periods during 2015–2017 and validated with calculated and observed heads. The normalized RMS error 7.57% of the validated model conveys its robustness and estimates groundwater budget at the demarcated 77 cells. The theoretical scenarios for water level projections against the increased groundwater pumping rates of 10%, 25%, and 50% were generated. It showed a declining trend of water level for the projected 10-year period with varied magnitude and vulnerability for drought conditions. The different time periods of water level touching the basement (i.e., dry borewell) infers a distinct hydrogeological property of an individual cell advocating to adapt a cell level management plan. In this article, we explained two cells (nos. 12 and 60) in detail to show the varying characteristic of aquifer against the different pumping rates.