IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/endesu/v15y2013i5p1365-1387.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A study on the significance of lithology in groundwater quality of Madurai district, Tamil Nadu (India)

Author

Listed:
  • C. Thivya
  • S. Chidambaram
  • C. Singaraja
  • R. Thilagavathi
  • M. Prasanna
  • P. Anandhan
  • I. Jainab

Abstract

The groundwater occurs in hard rock aquifers, which is more predominant in India. It is more common in the southern peninsula especially Tamil Nadu. Madurai district is located in the central part of Tamil Nadu, underlain predominantly by crystalline formations and alluvium along the river course. The study area being a hard rock terrain, the groundwater is stored in cracks, fissures, joints, etc., and hence the quantity is lesser. The frequent failure of monsoon also aggravates the scarcity of this commodity. In this scenario, the quality and hydrogeochemistry of the available quantum of water plays a significant role for the determination of its utility and in tracing out the hydrogeochemical evaluation. Fifty-four groundwater samples were collected representing the entire study area. The samples collected were representative covering all the major litho units of the study area (charnockite -21, fissile hornblende biotite gneiss-21, granite-4, quartzite-3, and 5 samples from flood plain alluvium). The samples collected were analyzed for major ions and were classified for different purposes like drinking, domestic, and agriculture, with respect to lithology. The comparison of the groundwater samples with the drinking water standards shows that few samples fall above the drinking water limit irrespective of lithology. The samples were classified with sodium absorption ratio, electrical conductivity, residual sodium carbonate, sodium percentage (Na %), Kellys ratio, and magnesium hazard, and permeability index for irrigation purpose found that most of the samples were suitable for irrigation purpose irrespective of lithology. Total hardness and corrosivity index were studied for the domestic purpose and found that the samples of the granitic terrain are safe. Apart from this, index of base exchange, Schoellers water type, Stuyfzands classification were attempted along with Gibbs plot to determine the major geochemical activity of the region. The study reveals that the samples collected from granitic and quartzitic terrains are comparatively better for the domestic and drinking purpose due to the presence of resistant minerals to weathering. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Suggested Citation

  • C. Thivya & S. Chidambaram & C. Singaraja & R. Thilagavathi & M. Prasanna & P. Anandhan & I. Jainab, 2013. "A study on the significance of lithology in groundwater quality of Madurai district, Tamil Nadu (India)," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 15(5), pages 1365-1387, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:endesu:v:15:y:2013:i:5:p:1365-1387
    DOI: 10.1007/s10668-013-9439-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10668-013-9439-z
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10668-013-9439-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. C. Singaraja & S. Chidambaram & P. Anandhan & M. Prasanna & C. Thivya & R. Thilagavathi, 2015. "A study on the status of saltwater intrusion in the coastal hard rock aquifer of South India," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 443-475, June.
    2. M. Chitsazan & N. Aghazadeh & Y. Mirzaee & Y. Golestan, 2019. "Hydrochemical characteristics and the impact of anthropogenic activity on groundwater quality in suburban area of Urmia city, Iran," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 331-351, February.
    3. Puja Chowdhury & Bhabani Prasad Mukhopadhyay & Siperna Nayak & Amit Bera, 2022. "Hydro-chemical characterization of groundwater and evaluation of health risk assessment for fluoride contamination areas in the eastern blocks of Purulia district, India," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(9), pages 11320-11347, September.
    4. C. Singaraja & S. Chidambaram & P. Anandhan & M. Prasanna & C. Thivya & R. Thilagavathi & J. Sarathidasan, 2014. "Determination of the utility of groundwater with respect to the geochemical parameters: a case study from Tuticorin District of Tamil Nadu (India)," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 689-721, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:endesu:v:15:y:2013:i:5:p:1365-1387. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.