Groundwater quality appraisal using IWQI and PCA for irrigation uses
Hemant Raheja, Arun Goel, Mahesh Pal
Abstract
This study used data collected over 19 sites to assess groundwater quality status of Kurukshetra (Haryana state, India) for irrigation purposes. Irrigation Water Quality Index (IWQI), Wilcox diagram, and principal component analysis were considered to determine current water quality. ArcGIS was used for spatial distribution of irrigation parameters. Results suggest that out of total samples, 5.3% of groundwater samples fall under ‘High Restriction,’ 68.42% of groundwater samples under ‘Moderate Restriction,’ and 26.28% of groundwater samples under ‘Low Restriction.’ Results of Wilcox and USSL diagrams suggested the suitability of groundwater for irrigation. Wilcox diagram indicated that 78.9% of groundwater samples fall in the Excellent-to-Good region, whereas USSL diagram classified all groundwater samples in low-to-medium or from medium-to-high class range. The results of PCA approach demonstrated that first five principal components (PCs) consisting of nine input variable represent 79.23% of total variance in groundwater quality.