Finding the potential of underground water resources through the weighted index overlay method (case study: Arsanjan plain)

Discovering ground water resources as one way of supplying drinking water of the world is an essential and inevitable issue due to the increasing demand for water. In this research، we tried to use the available raw data، such as geological layers، topographic maps، maps of water wells in the region and channel maps and faults in the region to produce maps such as slope، floor height، drainage density of Category 2 and 3 and the distance from waterways of Category 3 and distance from the fault. Each layer was given a weight from 1 to 9 and they were prioritized based on their potential finding percent; then، to have an accurate map of the potential of the existing layer set، they were integrated based on mathematical method and the zones of high power have been identified. The results show that 104 km2 of plain areas of Arsanjan have high capability to extract drinking water. The more areas are in the north، North East and central plain and small parts are in the southwest part and in accordance with the low altitude and slope down، the highest channel density and the lowest distance from the waterways is for the waterways and faults. Due to falling water table of Arsanjan plain، there is a need for more measures such as monitoring the exploitation of water resources، basin water transfer between artificial recharge plain areas with high potential.