Groundwater quality and contamination: an application of GIS

Good quality drinking water is of utmost importance for the survival and development of human society in this modern era of contamination of groundwater throughout the world. However, the problem is enormous in many countries, especially in arid and semi-arid regions of the globe, where a vast number of people purely rely on groundwater for their daily uses including drinking, household, and irrigation purposes. This thematic issue of Environmental Earth Sciences was initiated to comprehensively comprehend the groundwater quality and its contamination process using various scientifically profound methods, so that considerable strategic steps can be implemented to mitigate the sources of pollution as well as revamp the groundwater quality scenarios and also improve the safety and securing the supply of drinking water in many regions. Specifically, studies reported in this thematic issue precisely emphasized on groundwater quality and contamination of anthropogenic and geogenic sources disseminated over an extensive geographic regions including China, India, Pakistan, Korea, Mexico, Iran, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Ukraine, Kuwait, Turkey, and Brazil. The papers which were published in this thematic issue were remarkable and also covered a wide range of topics related to the main theme of the thematic issue/research topic, and these articles will have a broad impact on the sustainable protection of groundwater quality. However, the significant outcome of each contribution in this thematic issue was plainly recapitulated in this article, and more importantly, a few fruitful research directions were also recommended to promote further studies on groundwater contamination and evaluate the suitability of groundwater for various purposes.