Springs are one of the vital sources of water in the Mizoram district of North-Eastern hilly state of India. However, there is a paucity of literature on spring water serviceability, recharge potentiality and spring watershed management. Therefore, the present research aims to prepare spring water suitable and vulnerable watershed map of the Aizawl district using AHP-TOPSIS and AHP-VIKOR models. Highest relief, mean slope, mean annual rainfall, mean annual temperature, distribution of springs, geomorphic units, geological formations, stream order, concentration of lineaments and epicentre were considered as major spring suitability inducing factors. Besides, distribution of landslide, forest fire, forest cover area, built-up area, stone mining sites, proportion of agricultural land, degraded land, open area and water body were taken to measure vulnerability across watersheds. Relative analysis of AHP-TOPSIS (0–0.60) and AHP-VIKOR (0.04–1.00) shows that central part of the district is suitable for spring water. Study further reveals that hazard intensity and anthropogenic interventions are also very high in central part compared to other regions (AHP-TOPSIS—0.0–0.85 and AHP-VIKOR—0.0–1.00). Consequently, watershed suitable and vulnerable maps prepared in this study could act as a blueprint for spring management. Lastly, ROC curve shows that AHP-TOPSIS (0.816) is slightly better in its prediction compared to AHP-VIKOR (0.743).

The role of groundwater in irrigation and drinking purposes and sustaining growth in economy is well-known. Groundwater is generally less susceptible to contamination and pollution when compared to surface water bodies. This paper is based on extensive investigations on the spatial and seasonal representative measurement of chemical parameters from 80 dug wells of Churu and adjoining Bikaner districts of Rajasthan, India. The region has dearth of water resources – both surface and sub-surface, with the main source of water being the dug wells. The application of hydro-statistical techniques and tools like Pearson’s correlation coefficient, relative activity of sodium ion (SAR), Wilcox diagram, Piper diagram and magnesium hazard indicate that the chemical parameters of the water of the study region is of very poor quality and not suitable for drinking and irrigation purposes. Wilcox diagram shows high sodium content, can destroy the soil structure rendering the soil and water unsuitable.

Morphometric analysis is the mathematical analysis of a watershed. Groundwater storage is directly related to the morphometry of a watershed. Remote sensing and GIS gives an opportunity for the scientific and empirical investigation towards groundwater potentiality. The utilization of RS/GIS for scientific investigation into ground water potentiality is quite innovative for the hilly state of Mizoram of India, which faces acute water shortage during the winter season. Vanvate Lui basin of Mizoram was thus chosen for the present study. It is an important source of water for a significant number of rural villages like Zote, Chhipphir, and Lungmovi. The present study analyzed the groundwater potentiality of Vanvate lui basin and undertook groundwater potentiality zonation of Vanvate lui basin using eTOPSIS model. eTOPSIS is an intregated knowledge-based multi-criteria decision-making model assimilating TOPSIS objective weighting method and Shannon Entropy. Areal, relief and linear morphometric aspects of Vanvate lui basin were extracted from ALOS PALSAR DEM for conducting MCDM. It was found that sub-basins 1, 6, 8 and 2 have high potentiality for groundwater storage. Similar, studies were also done on the Donor basin adjacent to the study area for model validation. After applying e-TOPSIS in the Donor basin, it was found that the result of the study matches the groundwater data of Donor basin as provided by the PHE department, Mizoram. The zones found to be under high potential of groundwater in the sub-basins 14, 9, 2, 11, 6 and 5 are the ones where the ground water depth is less than 70 meters as measured by the ground water department of Mizoram state. The present study will help the policymakers, village governance system, district development authorities and P.W.D of Mizoram to take proper steps towards developing the rural life quality, identifying suitable groundwater storage and ensuring proper steps towards watershed management. It is hoped that the research work will help in mitigating the water scarcity problem of the study area during the dry winter season.

Land use land cover (LULC) classification of Churu district of Rajasthan state in India was done through hybrid classification technique. Landsat imageries of 1998, 2008 and 2018 were used to ascertain the rate and nature of spatio-temporal LULC changes. Major focus was given on vegetative cover change detection of the study area. On the basis of field survey and standard classification classes, the land use classes of the study area were divided into eleven classes. A detailed vegetative classification has been done while categorizing the classes. This classification method employed maximum likelihood and ISODATA clustering. The decision tree approach was used to create the multi-temporal hybrid LULC classification. The accuracy assessment results have shown excellent results at 91% overall accuracy with a kappa of 0.92. The results indicated that agriculture, crop land dominated the land use of Churu district while natural vegetation (forest areas) had the least share in land cover during the entire study period from 1998 to 2018. Shannon’s entropy index was used to determine the changes in spatial distributional pattern of built up during the period 1998 to 2018 for the study area in general and also for each of the eight sub-administrative regions (tehsils). The increase in the built up area in the study area during the period of 1998 to 2018 was quite paltry with a general dispersed type of built up. The increase varied from moderate to nominal with the entropy value decreasing from 0.84 to 0.71 for the study area in general.