Application of Remote Sensing Techniques and GIS-Multicriteria decision Analysis for Groundwater Potential Mapping in Souss Watershed, Morocco

Planning and management of groundwater resources requires modern techniques and scientific principles. Remote sensing and geographic information system based multicriteria and analytic hierarchy approaches are used to identify promising areas for groundwater potential in Souss river basin. In this study, seven parameters that affect groundwater occurrences are derived using Saaty’s analytic hierarchy approach. Those parameters are geology, slope, lineaments density, soil, elevation, drainage density and land cover. The thematic maps were integrated using ArcGIS 10.3 software to generate the overall groundwater potential map for the study area. The result revealed that the study area can be categorized into five different groundwater potential zones: areas of very good groundwater potential are estimated to cover 3547.48km^2 (20.97% of the study area), good potential 1923.44 km^2 (21.6 %), moderate potential 3578.05 km^2 (21.16%), poor potential 4217.21 km^2 (24.93%), and very poor potential 3646.75 km^2 (21.56 %). The classes of groundwater potential map were independently tested against the distribution of the groundwater wells, results of such verification proved that the groundwater potential zones are reliable and representative.