Earth, Atmosphere & Environment Sciences
Title : | Resilience of Groundwater Physico-Chemical Evolution in River Ganga deltaic aquifers to changing Hydrologic regime |
Area of research : | Earth, Atmosphere & Environment Sciences |
Focus area : | Hydrology |
Principal Investigator : | Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee IIT, Kharagpur, West Bengal |
Timeline Start Year : | 2019 |
Timeline End Year : | 2022 |
Details
Executive Summary : | The proposed research work aims to initate an integrated hydrogeological study for understanding the hydrodynamic and chemodynamic of surface water groundwater interaction of largely populated and climatically vulnerable ecosystem of the River Ganga delta aquifers and sounderban world heritage site. It consists of qunatitative and qualitative study of surface water-groundwater interaction in diurnal to annual time scales. Couples physical and chemical hydrogeological techniques, which include field installation of observing wells and in-situ instrumentation, would be applied. Reactive transport model will be develped on the nurtrient and other solutes cycling from analytical and nemerical data of water/sediment. Subsurface groundwater flow mapping, sediment groundwater interaction model and hydrostratigraphic modeling are the other aspect of this study. It is expected thta the knowledge gained from the successful completion of the project would lead to enhancement of the understanding of the estuarine hydrodynamics at site specific scales and at extrapolated large scales, along with generation of reaction path of contaminant and nuterients in estuarine aquifers at the present day from daily to annual scale. Outcome of the study would directly benefit in securing sustainable and safe drinking water to the large number of groundwater dependent resident in the Ganga delta, which is under lot of stress from ongoing climatic and gegenic hazards as well as predicted sea level rise. |
Co-PI: | Dr. Ramananda Chakrabarti Center for Earth Sciences, IISc, Bangalore, Karnataka, Karnataka, |
Total Budget (INR): | 75,79,500 |
Outcome/Output: | This study provided the first approximation of the groundwater contamination extent in the deltaic region of the Sundarbans
Influence of physical processes studied on the chemical composition of the region. The hydraulic connection defined and identified in this study between shallow and deeper depths indicates a possible threat of excessive groundwater pumping towards seawater encroachment |
Organizations involved