Significance of lineaments on the groundwater regime of a Basaltic Terrain: a case study of a watershed from Nagpur District, Central India

The groundwater resources in the country, such as India, are under stress due to its over-exploitation for various purposes, such as irrigation, industries and drinking water, etc. The situation specifically in hard rock areas is grimmer because of limitations on occurrence of groundwater due to physical nature of hard rocks, particularly aquifer porosity, as most of these lacks in primary porosity. However, such rocks have secondary porosity in the form of fractures and weathering. Since the country frequently experiences water scarcity in the event of drought due to failure of monsoon, it is important to identify groundwater potential zones for the future development of available groundwater resources. The situation in the Maharashtra state is similar to that of entire country, since 93% of geographically area is covered by hard rocks. The most conspicuous is Deccan basalt, which constitutes nearly 83% of the geographical area. The Deccan basalts form multilayered aquifer system as each flow has a top layer of vesicular basalt underlain by hard and compact massive basalt. Due to its hard nature, the occurrence and storage of groundwater are very limited; as a result, the Deccan trap aquifers are moderately to poorly yielding aquifers. In contrast, it is observed that the aquifers are productive in localized favorable situation developed due to fracture porosity. In view of this, an attempt is made to study influence of lineaments on groundwater regime in WRJ–4 watershed of Nagpur district using remote-sensing technique. The findings of the study are presented in the current paper.