APPLICATION OF WATER QUALITY INDEX FOR GROUNDWATER QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF NANDED TEHSIL, (M.S.) INDIA

摘要

Groundwater is an essential natural resource constituent of our life support system, where, it is used for drinking and irrigation purpose. An attempt has been made to recognize the hydro chemical characteristics of groundwater to develop water quality index model (WQI) in Nanded Tehsil. A total of 50 representative groundwater samples were collected from dug/bore wells during post-monsoon 2012 and analyzed for major cations and anions. The groundwater quality were assessed by different physicochemical parameters such as pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), total hardness (TH), calcium(Ca~(2+)), magnesium(Mg~(2+)), sodium (Na~+),potassium(K~+), carbonate (CO~-_3),bicarbonate (HCO~-_3), chloride (Cl~-), nitrate (NO_3~-), sulphate (SO_4~-) and phosphate (PO_4~-). The Hydrochemical results were compared with Indian standards (BIS) which illustrate that TDS (16%), TH (22%), Ca (2%), Cl (2%) and Na (12%) samples exceeds the permissible limits. Water quality index (WQI) used to classify water quality as excellent, good, poor, and unsuitable categories. WQI shows that 34% samples are excellent, 60% samples are good and 6% unsuitable for drinking purpose. Through clutching hydro chemical investigation, GIS based IDW technique was used to signify the spatial variation WQI of study area.