Innovative approach applications for groundwater management at the Ajmer division

For proper management of groundwater (GW) resources, appropriate management strategies are necessary. It is essential to know where and why these management strategies need to be applied. For this prioritization of GW blocks and identification of factors affecting declining trends in GW are essential and for addressing these issues, two innovative approaches are applied in the present study. In the first approach, prioritization of GW blocks is performed by employing trend analysis in seasonal groundwater levels (GWLs) while identification of factors affecting declining trends in GW is performed in second approach by analyzing trends in climatic parameters, namely MNTEMP and rainfall (RF). Stage of GW development in most of the blocks in districts of the Ajmer division has already exceeded 100%, which indicated that the scope of GW development is already exhausted. Thus, in the present study, aforesaid approaches are applied at every block in districts of the Ajmer division for proper management of GW resources. Results showed that, in some blocks, GW is found to be significantly declining due to significantly incrementing MNTEMP and declining RF. Also, GW is found to be declining due to declining RF at few blocks and due to significantly incrementing MNTEMP at some blocks in districts of the Ajmer division. HIGHLIGHT Two innovative approaches are suggested and applied in the present study.; First innovative approach is applied for the prioritization of blocks in the Ajmer division.; Also, it is applied for identification of blocks having declining (significant and non-significant) trends in seasonal GW.; The second innovative approach is applied for the identification of factor(s) affecting aforesaid declining trends.; Concurrently analyzing four aspects of trends in seasonal groundwater levels, rainfall and mean temperature.;