International Journal of Irrigation and Water Management

International Journal of Irrigation and Water Management ISSN 5423-5294 Vol. 6 (2), pp. 001-012, February, 2019. © International Scholars Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Application of GIS for determination of groundwater quality suitable in crops influenced by irrigation water in the Damghan region of Iran

Shahram Ashraf¹*, Hossein Afshari² and Abdol Ghaffar Ebadi³

¹Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Armenian State Agrarian University, Armenia.

²Department of Agriculture, Damghan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Damghan, Iran.

³Department of Biological Sciences, Jouybar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Jouybar, Iran.

Accepted 18 November, 2018

Abstract 

In order to evaluate the quality of groundwater in Damghan plain for irrigation purposes, 199 surveyed wells with GPS data used to produce the map. The features that generally had considered for evaluation of the suitable quality of groundwater for irrigation are salinity, water infiltration rate, and specific ion toxicity. The SAR , ions Ca²⁺,Mg²⁺, Na⁺, K⁺, CO₃ ^2-, HCO_3-^– , SO₄^2- , Cl^-, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), pH were analyze as the evaluation indexes. The EC map indicates the presence of about 0.04% of the study area; groundwater lie in good range (none degree of restriction on use) 61.38% slight to moderate and 38.58% severe for irrigation purposes. The suitable zones for EC_w are in the central and northwestern and portion of south of the study area (61.42%). The quality of groundwater for the sodium hazard on infiltration is in 98.9% of study area none degree of restriction on use and in 0.6% slight to moderate and 0.5% severe. The suitable zones for infiltration have no degree of restriction on use in majority of the study area. The maps result of crops yield potential as influenced by irrigation water salinity (EC_w) indicates that crops barley>wheat > Alfalfa respectively have yield potential more against EC_W in study area (99.42,92.3 and 0.23%). The results of thematic maps of sodium_w, cholorid_w were overlaid with maps of sodium_plant, cholorid_plant showed that the crops yield potential of barley and wheat. Alfalfa in all the study area is 100%.

Key words: Geomorphological mapping, GIS, Damghan plain, total dissolved solids (TDS), electrical conductivity (EC), water standard, groundwater.