Groundwater is the most prioritized water source in India and plays an indispensable role in India’s economy. The groundwater potential mapping is key to the sustainable groundwater development and management. A hybrid methodology is applied to delineate potential groundwater zones based on remote sensing, geographical information systems (GIS) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) as on multicriteria decision making. For the purpose of demonstrating field application, Chittar watershed, Tamilnadu, India is studied as an example. The important morphological characteristics considered in the study are lithology, geomorphology, lineament density, drainage density, slope, and Soil Conservation Service– Curve Number (SCS-CN). These six thematic layers are generated in a GIS platform. Based on intersecting the layers, AHP method, the values for adopting the pairwise comparison normalized weight and normalized subclasses weightage were given. The normalized subclass weightage is input into each layer subclass. Then, weighted linear combination method is used to add the data layers in GIS platform to generate groundwater potential Index (GWPI) map. The GWPI map is validated based on the net recharge computed from the differences of measured groundwater levels between the pre-monsoon and post-monsoon in the year 2018. The kappa statistics are used to measure level spatial consistency between the GWPI and net recharge map. The overall average spatial matching accuracy between the two data sets is 0.86, while the kappa coefficient for GWPI with net recharge, 0.78. The results show that in Chittar watershed about 870 km² area is divided into high potential zone (i.e. sum of very high and high potential zone), 667 km² area, as the moderate one and the rest 105 km² area, as the poor zone (i.e. sum of very poor and poor potential zone).

In this paper, the plexiglass experimental column was used to analyze the capillary fringe thickness of three kinds of lithologies-silty sand, silt and silty clay-providing a basis for defining the interface in the study of hydrodynamics at the water table between vandose water and groundwater. The capillary fringe generally refers to the subsurface layer in which the groundwater seeps up to the air-entry suction value due to capillary action, and is nearly saturated with water. The thickness of the capillary fringe varies with different lithologies. In this experiment, self-made stable water supply devices were used to study the height of capillary rise, capillary water volume and capillary fringe thickness of the three lithologies through capillary experiment and numerical simulation. Experimental results show as follows: (1) Rising height of capillary water is related to time, particle radius, volume, etc., and the relationship between height and time is in line with the Hill model. (2) The smaller the particle radius, the more water the pores contain, and the ratio of the unsaturated portion of capillary water to the total water content gradually rises. Experimental results obtained by numerical simulation, segmentation and actual measurement are consistent. (3) The thickness of the capillary zone is related to the lithology. The larger the particle size, the smaller the thickness of the capillary fringe, and vice versa. In silty sand, the thickness measures about 13 cm. The figure rises to 16 cm in silt, and 37 cm in silty clay. This work studies the law of soil water transport at saturated-unsaturated interface. Experimental results are of great significance to the study of soil water and salt transport and soil salinization control in unsaturated zone.

Horizontal soil column method was used to determine the horizontal diffusion rate of sandy loam, loam and clay loam under the same bulk density. The results showed that the migration rates of different lithological wet fronts were different. The sandy loam had the fastest migration rate, the loam followed, and the clay loam was the slowest, but the law of change is the same among the three lithologies. The volumetric water content affects the change of Boltzmann parameter λ. When the volumetric water content is between 0.35-0.45 cm³/cm³, λ approaches stability. When the volumetric water content is less than 0.35 cm³/cm³, the λ value decreases rapidly with the decrease of water content. The water diffusion rate is related to the volumetric water content and particle size. The greater the moisture content is, the greater the diffusion rate will be. The larger the particle size, the larger the diffusion rate. The diffusivity of sandy loam is 10-30 times larger than that of loam and clay loam. The relationship between water content and diffusion rate is in accordance with the exponential function.

Based on three typical mediums (sandy loam, loam and sandy clay loam) in Hebei Plain, this paper designs phreatic evaporation experiments under different lithology and phreatic depth. Based on the analysis of experimental data, the phreatic evaporation law and influencing factors of three mediums were studied. The results showed that: (1) The shallower the phreatic depth, the larger the phreatic evaporation. (2) Sandy clay loam has the biggest response to the increase of the phreatic depth, sandy loam is the second and loam is the smallest. (3) The limit depth of phreatic evaporation of sandy clay loam is about 3 m and that of loam and sandy loam is about 2 m and 3 m, seperately. (4) By fitting the daily evaporation of phreatic water and phreatic depth, the results showed that sandy loam and sandy clay loam are exponential functions and loam is power functions.