Assessment of groundwater vulnerability for pollution using DRASTIC Index, young alluvial plain, Western Nile Delta, Egypt

摘要

Groundwater utilization in agriculture and domestic uses has increased so there is emerging mindfulness for groundwater monitoring pollution. The expense of groundwater observation especially in large areas is costly so geographic information system (GIS)-based DRASTIC model become an absolute necessity to discover the groundwater vulnerable zones to preserve groundwater quality by means of monitoring the vulnerable areas. In this work, generic and pesticide DRASTIC based on geographic information system (GIS) were accomplished. Regarding the generic DRASTIC model, the detected vulnerability classes covering the area are moderate, high, and very high, which represent 28.4%, 58.9%, and 12.7%, respectively. However, in the vulnerability map generated by pesticide DRASTIC model, the results indicated that about 22.4% of the study area has a very high vulnerability to contamination, 61.4% has high vulnerability, and 16.2% has moderate vulnerability.