Groundwater Storage Analysis in Changing Land Use/Land Cover for Haridwar Districts of Upper Ganga Canal Command (1972–2011)

Over the last century, a key change in land use has happened locally, provincially and all around. These will prolong in the future also. The affect of built-up area on groundwater has a key worry over past many years, and in exacting, to those worried in groundwater amount and subjective examinations. Augmentation in impermeable region due to urbanization results in decreased infiltration and finally affecting the groundwater storage. So, land use change has to be calculated with spatial information technologies; especially, the application of remotely sensed data and geographical information systems (GIS) has been used. The present study investigates the urban growth of Haridwar district, Uttrakhand, using satellite data for the years 1972, 1980, 1992, 2002 and 2011. Unscrupulous population increase, rise in food, silage and energy demands in combination with industrial action have led to quick modification in land use patterns. In this study, GIS tool is used to classify different land use classes from remote sensing data and groundwater potential in Haridwar district, and supervised classification technique is applied to categorize urban LULC. The study of results shows the extreme increase of urban area and reduced green cover within the city boundary limit. Due to increase of settlement area will directly impact the decrease of groundwater level. Proper planning of land use and groundwater organization is an input to socioeconomic upliftment of a region.