ASSESSMENT OF GROUNDWATER POTENTIAL ZONE FOR AGRICULTURE AND DOMESTIC PURPOSES IN SALAYEA, DISTRACT LOFA COUNTY, LIBERIA

Abstract

Finding potential groundwater storage areas is a challenging task, especially in the study areas. Satellite remote sensing could offer a new promise to identify surface and groundwater resources with less time to identify possible areas with potential groundwater. A map primarily based totally on remote sensing and geographic information system was developed using seven parameters: geomorphology, soil texture, land use/land cover, drainage density, lineament density, slope, and precipitation map of Salayea District. All the thematic maps were created using weighted overlay methods in the spatial analysis tool in ArcGIS 10.2. The parameters were assigned weights using the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), where, as the diverse classes inside each parameter were classified agreeing to their relative significance to the groundwater potential. The study characterized other areas with their excellent (4.1%), good (37%), moderate (52.1%), poor (6.6%), and very poor (0.1%). The GPS-based output result was validated through a field study conducted by (Siddi Raju et al., 2019), in which wells in different cities and villages were selected at random using GPS instruments. Therefore, the results could indicate that the current methodology using AHP with improved parameterization offers better potential for more realistic identification and mapping areas with groundwater potential and reducing drought risk in larger study areas.