DETERMINATION OF GROUNDWATER POTENTIAL ZONE USING AHP BASED ON GIS FOR KONYA, TÜRKİYE

Groundwater provides most of the freshwater needs such as drinking, irrigation and industry. As a result of increasing population, urbanization and industrialization, groundwater resources are faced with the risk of decreasing and pollution. In addition, exploited usage of irrigation water from groundwater during agricultural activities causes the formation of sinkholes. For this reason, Konya in Türkiye, having a lot of agricultural activities and common sinkhole formations, was chosen as the study area. This research utilized the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), a type of multi-criteria decision-making analysis, to assess the groundwater potential in Konya, Türkiye. For this purpose, land use, slope, rainfall, topographic wetness index, drainage density, elevation, plan curvature, profile curvature and stream power index thematic maps were created, and their weights were determined with AHP. Groundwater potential map (GWPM) was produced by overlay analysis in GIS environment. The GWPM was validated by comparing it with the groundwater zones (GWZ) map given in the report of “Konya Closed Basin Management Plan” project. As a result of the validation process, the accuracy value was found to be 0.87.