GIS-Based Multi-criteria Evaluation for Deciphering of Groundwater Potential

In this paper, an attempt has been made to decipher the groundwater potential areas in Wonbera Basin, Ethiopia, using multi-criteria evaluation coupled with GIS. Thematic layers such as soil type, soil texture, landuse, rainfall, slope, geology, faults, drainage density and stream power index were generated and analyzed in GIS domain. Suitable weights for each thematic map have been given using multi-criteria evaluation. “Weighted sum” tool of ArcGIS 10.3.1 software has been used to get the groundwater prospects map of Wonbera River Basin. The final output depicts that about 48.01% land of Wonbera Basin falls in “good” groundwater prospectus zone; 27.75%, 17.76% and 6.47% of land fall in “moderate,” “poor” and “very poor” groundwater prospectus zones, respectively. Elevation, slope and soil texture have been analyzed well to understand their influence on groundwater prospectus.