Groundwater Potential Zones Assessment Using Geospatial Models in Semi-Arid Areas of South Africa

Adesola, Gbenga Olamide; Thamaga, Kgabo Humphrey; Gwavava, Oswald; Pharoe, Benedict Kinshasa

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Groundwater Potential Zones Assessment Using Geospatial Models in Semi-Arid Areas of South Africa

dc.contributor.author	Adesola, Gbenga Olamide
dc.contributor.author	Thamaga, Kgabo Humphrey
dc.contributor.author	Gwavava, Oswald
dc.contributor.author	Pharoe, Benedict Kinshasa
dc.contributor.editor	Frappart, F.
dc.date.accessioned	2025-09-19T10:52:14Z
dc.date.available	2025-09-19T10:52:14Z
dc.date.issued	2023-10-06
dc.description.abstract	Water resources are under tremendous pressure as a result of the growing demand for water to meet human needs. Hence, it is necessary to delineate groundwater potential zones (GWPZs) to sustainably develop and manage groundwater resources. In this study, the geospatial-based analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and frequency ratio (FR) techniques were used to identify the GWPZs. Seven factors (geology, rainfall, slope, lineament density, soil, drainage density, and land use/land cover), which partially or entirely influence the groundwater potentiality of an area, were accessed separately and later combined to create GWPZ maps. Weights and ranks were assigned to the factors to perform the AHP model using existing knowledge. The FR was performed by calculating the percentage ratio between the dependent variable (boreholes) and the independent variable (factors). The preparation of the contributing factors and the creation of the resulting models was done using ArcGIS 10.8. The final GWPZ maps were classified into five zones: very low, low, moderate, high, and very high. About 80 boreholes in the study area were randomly subset into training and testing datasets; 58% were used for model training, and the remaining 42% were used for validation purposes. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for the GWPZs models were generated, and the areas under the curves (AUC) were calculated. Validation of the models shows that the FR model is more efficient (85.3% accuracy) than the AHP model (83.2% accuracy). The findings show that the AHP and FR models are reliable and can be adopted to characterize GWPZs in arid or semi-arid environments.
dc.identifier.citation	Adesola, G.O.; Thamaga, K.H.; Gwavava, O.; Pharoe, B.K. Groundwater Potential Zones Assessment Using Geospatial Models in Semi-Arid Areas of South Africa. Land 2023, 12, 1877. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/land12101877
dc.identifier.issn	2073-445X
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11837/3197
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher	MDPI
dc.subject	GIS
dc.subject	groundwater
dc.subject	frequency ratio
dc.subject	ROC
dc.subject	water scarcity
dc.title	Groundwater Potential Zones Assessment Using Geospatial Models in Semi-Arid Areas of South Africa
dc.type	Article