Extract relevant features from DEM for groundwater potential mapping

Abstract. Multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) method has been applied much in groundwater potential mapping researches. But when to data scarce areas, it will encounter lots of problems due to limited data. Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is the digital representations of the topography, and has many applications in various fields. Former researches had been approved that much information concerned to groundwater potential mapping (such as geological features, terrain features, hydrology features, etc.) can be extracted from DEM data. This made using DEM data for groundwater potential mapping is feasible. In this research, one of the most widely used and also easy to access data in GIS, DEM data was used to extract information for groundwater potential mapping in batter river basin in Alberta, Canada. First five determining factors for potential ground water mapping were put forward based on previous studies (lineaments and lineament density, drainage networks and its density, topographic wetness index (TWI), relief and convergence Index (CI)). Extraction methods of the five determining factors from DEM were put forward and thematic maps were produced accordingly. Cumulative effects matrix was used for weight assignment, a multi-criteria evaluation process was carried out by ArcGIS software to delineate the potential groundwater map. The final groundwater potential map was divided into five categories, viz., non-potential, poor, moderate, good, and excellent zones. Eventually, the success rate curve was drawn and the area under curve (AUC) was figured out for validation. Validation result showed that the success rate of the model was 79% and approved the method’s feasibility. The method afforded a new way for researches on groundwater management in areas suffers from data scarcity, and also broaden the application area of DEM data.