Aquifers are vulnerable to contamination from residential, agricultural, and industrial pollutants. Agriculture-related activities are well-known to cause nonpoint source pollution of groundwater from nitrate (NO3). Assessment of groundwater vulnerability to nitrate contamination from nonpoint sources is essential to decision makers, land use planners, environmental regulators, and stakeholders to highlight areas where protection alternative measures should be introduced and where groundwater monitoring and modeling efforts ought to be carried out. Spatial analysis techniques are needed in managing and processing hydrologic and hydrogeologic data. Thus, geographic Information System (GIS) is a sound approach to evaluate the spatial outcomes of the assessment of groundwater vulnerability to nitrate contamination This paper aims at developing a simple yet efficient GIS-based framework to assess groundwater vulnerability to nitrate contamination through the utilization of the well-known DRASTIC model. Since DRASTIC provides an assessment of the intrinsic vulnerability independently from the contaminant of concern, this paper proposes an improvement to the DRASTIC model to account for the vulnerability to nitrate contamination. The Gaza Coastal Aquifer (GCA) was taken as a demonstration example to show method development and applicability. - See more at: http://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/40792%28173%29100#sthash.BuJsTmHS.dpuf

Conference Title

Impacts of Global Climate Change, World Water and Environmental Resources Congress 2005 Anchorage, Alaska

Conference Country

Palestine

Conference Date

Jan. 1, 2005 - Jan. 1, 2005

Conference Sponsor

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