TITLE:
GIS Based Modified DRASTIC-LU Index and Comparative Land Use/Land Cover Change to Evaluate Groundwater Vulnerability in Parbatipur, Dinajpur, Bangladesh
AUTHORS:
Md. Emdadul Haque
KEYWORDS:
DRASTIC, Modified DRASTIC-LU, Groundwater Vulnerability, Land Use/Land Cover, Coal Mining, Rating, Weighting
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.14 No.6,
June
25,
2026
ABSTRACT: Groundwater vulnerability assessment is a very important topic nowadays which is also very challenging for sustainable environment and integrated water resource management. This study attempts to evaluate the current state of groundwater vulnerability, assess the level and measure the impact of land use/land cover on groundwater vulnerability of Parbatipur upazila of Dinajpur district, Bangladesh. GIS-based DRASTIC is used for assessing the groundwater vulnerability and Modified DRASTIC-LU is used to add the land use/land cover parameter because of the high impact of land use/land cover changes in this region. Unsupervised classification is also used to show the comparative land use/land cover of the 18 years. The DRASTIC Index shows 37% of the Parbatipur area belongs to the highly vulnerable zone while 27% is in the moderate and the rest of the 36% belongs to low vulnerable areas. Modified DRASTIC-LU results show the most alarming results that 48% area of Parbatipur belongs to a very highly vulnerable zone while 33% area belongs to a moderate groundwater vulnerability zone and 19% area has high groundwater vulnerability. The exploration of coal mining influences the groundwater resources here at Parbatipur and the result of the Comparative LU/LC shows that the human settlements of the study area have an increasing trend from 2004 to 2021. In the last 18 years, it increased as much as 2339 ha while the water body and vegetation cover are declining. A progressive vulnerability of groundwater is possibly due to a lack of water replenishment and/or over-exploitation of groundwater resources and underground coal mining along with the geographical disadvantage that accelerates the process of groundwater vulnerability in this area.