Detection of groundwater conditioning factors in a hilly environment

Champhai, the rice bowl of Mizoram, is known for wet rice practices. Rapid urbanization and global climate change increased the demand for groundwater. Champhai city, being a hilly township in northeast India, is very difficult to identify the potential groundwater water availability. The present study aimed at groundwater potentiality zonation in Champhai town. For these purposes ten (10) factors from topographic, climatic, hydrological and other conditions were assigned weightage based on the AHP (analytical hierarchy process) technique. The aspect was given maximum weightage as the aspect working as the controlling factors of precipitation intensity, vegetation and soil type, while LULC (land use land cover) was assigned minimum weightage that unscientific human activities reduced infiltration rate. Subsequently, an addition of ten weighted rasters was performed for groundwater potentiality zonation. As a result, it was seen that the maximum part of the study area covered low potentiality zones (31.88