Identification of Water Resource Potential Zones of Baghmundi Block in Purulia District, West Bengal

Remote sensing and GIS techniques have been broadly used to determine the water resource potentiality for the development and management of water resources. It is an important natural resource in our daily life and is used for domestic purposes. It’s amount varies from place to place and season to season. It is scarce during the dry season, but in the rainy season, it is plenty. Assessment of water resource potentiality is very important for the management of surface/groundwater resources. Water resource potential zones are delineated with the help of RS & GIS. In this paper, standard methodology has been used to delineate the water resource potential zones using Rs & GIS techniques. Different parameters have been considered for identifying the water resource such as drainage frequency, drainage density, geology, groundwater level, slope, soil, surface water bodies, and land use/land cover have been generated satellite data and Survey of India (SoI) toposheet of a scale 1:50,000. Suitable ranks are assigned to these parameters. Various thematic maps of each parameter have been prepared by using the 'Ordered Weighted Averaging' technique. Finally, the composite map is generated by assigning all the parameters to demarcate the water resource potential zones. The study area has been classified into five categories: very poor, poor, moderate, good and excellent. This suggested methodology has been used to achieve the goal of the objective of the study area. This paper will be helpful for the identification of suitable locations for agriculture and domestic use of surface and underground water resources.