Geospatial Analysis of Groundwater Quality in Ludhiana, Punjab (India)

This paper presents a geospatial analysis of the groundwater quality of Ludhiana, Punjab, India. The groundwater samples were collected from 99 locations using grid based sampling procedure and analysed for parameters viz. pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), total hardness (TH), calcium (Ca2+), magnesium (Mg2+), sodium (Na+), potassium (K+), fluoride (F-), chloride (Cl-), nitrate (NO3-), sulphate (SO24-) and bicarbonate (HCO3-). Sampling was done during both pre-monsoon and post-monsoon periods. Water quality index (WQI) was used to represent the groundwater quality of the study area. The WQI coupled with the spatial maps indicated that merely (1%) of the total study area had good groundwater quality and the rest of the study area fell under poor, very poor and unsuitable for drinking purpose. The geographical information system (GIS) based groundwater quality mapping presented in this paper could be a potential tool for groundwater quality management.