Green Cover and Groundwater Relationship with respect to Urbanization in Delhi

Abstract

Since, only 0.6 percent of total fresh water is groundwater, it is one of the scarce newlineresources for growing human population, globally. Accepted to be an important source of newlinewater in all climatic zones, good quality of groundwater and its ubiquitous availability newlinehave made human dependent on groundwater. India, being one of the largest consumers newlineof groundwater, suffers complications in groundwater occurrence due to geological and newlineclimatological conditions. Increase in withdrawal structures throughout country are newlineleading to overexploitation and depletion of resources, with maximum problem recorded newlinefrom alluvium region. Physiography of NCT of Delhi being dominated by alluvium newlineplains, thus suffers the drawback of geological and topological setup. Groundwater being newlineone of the important sources of water in Delhi, is also bearing the burnt of unplanned newlineurbanization in the city, thus decreasing scope of replenishment. newlineLand use-land cover of any region, controls the renewable portion of the groundwater, newlineand various studies are conducted worldwide to study the impacts of different land covers newlineon the availability and quality of groundwater. Of the different land covers covered by newlineresearchers, vegetated and urban areas were found to have major impacts on groundwater newlineresources. Since, all the studies were found scattered for different regions and land covers newlineseparately, the present study, thus was taken up to study the relationship of different types newlineof vegetated land covers and urban area with groundwater resources of Delhi. newlineThe study was designed with four land covers in Delhi viz., protected forest area, trees newlineoutside forest, maintained park and settlement area. Based on reconnaissance survey and newlineconsulting with Central Ground Water Board officials, two sites under each land cover newlinewere selected, keeping in mind the availability of piezometer and a groundwater source. newlineField work was conducted for two years, and samples were collected seasonally. newlineGroundwater and soil samples from selected eight study sites were collected ... newline