F-Hydra Index for Evaluating Groundwater Vulnerability in Data Scarce Regions

Abstract

Groundwater resources continue to be an important source of water supply for communities in developing countries. However, rapid population growth and urbanization, challenges the potential of groundwater to serve and meet the needs of growing populace. Various techniques have been developed over the last decade to assess groundwater vulnerability due changes in climate and prevailing natural environmental conditions. The difficulty in most of these methods has been intensive data requirements. This paper developed an innovative method called f-hydra index using three key parameters – flow accumulation (derived from Digital Elevation Model), landcover map and hydraulic conductivity.  The results of the index were successfully evaluated with widely used index – DRASTIC (for the Densu River Basin of Ghana, West Africa. The comparison of f-hydra to DRASTIC shows highly correlated areas in mapping vulnerable regions in the study area. The f-hydra index proves a noble way to assess groundwater vulnerability to pollution in data scarce regions. Authors envisaged the testing of the model in many other regions to ascertain it’s replicability globally.