Site Selection and Prioritizing the Suitable Sites for Groundwater Artificial Recharge Using Fuzzy Logic, Boolean Logic and overlay method

The spatial and temporal distribution of precipitation result in surface runoff and flood. Using this water in artificial recharge is a solution to increase groundwater recharge. Because the groundwater is considered as the major source of 99% of all retrievable fresh water, optimization of its usage would be very crucial. Groundwater artificial recharge using surface water is the recommended solution because that increases the aquifer storage. To identify the suitable sites for groundwater artificial recharge in the aquifer of Hamedan- Bahar plain, the six effective parameters including the ground slope, surface infiltration rate, vadoze zone thickness, electrical conductivity of the groundwater, land-use, were used. In the first method, each maps were classified based on the Boolean logic and then integrated via the AND operator. The results showed that 26% of study area was suitable for ground water recharge. Then, suitable areas were divided to three subsets using overlay method. The 0.53% was suitable, 21% was moderate and no area with very suitable appropriateness. In the third method, layers were rated based on the Fuzzy logic and integrated with the Fuzzy algebraic product operator. The 2.25, 7.71 and 16.76% of the study area were identified very suitable, suitable and assigned moderate, respectively. The result of Boolean logic sensitivity analysis showed that suitable zones increase 1.5% while suitable ranges in all parameters increase 50% against 0.5% reduction of suitable points at 50% reduction of suitable ranges of all parameters.