ABSTRACT
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over a billion people worldwide do not have access to clean drinking water. The excessive use and continuous mismanagement of water resources and the increasing water demands of proliferated users have led to water shortages, pollution of freshwater resources, and degraded ecosystems worldwide (Clarke, 1991; Falkenmark and Lundqvist, 1997; De Villiers, 2000; Tsakiris, 2004). Under these circumstances, the identi‰cation of groundwater potential zones and the proper utilization of water resources in hard rock terrain are important, particularly in drought-prone areas. The state of Tamil Nadu has a similar hard rock terrain located in the southern part of India. About two-thirds of the area is covered by a hard crystalline terrain comprising metamorphic, meta-sedimentary, and igneous rocks. Remote sensing is an excellent tool for geologists
CONTENTS
12.1 Introduction ........................................................................................... 205 12.2 Study Area ............................................................................................. 207 12.3 Materials and Methods ........................................................................ 208 12.4 Geology and Hydrogeology ................................................................ 208 12.5 Interpretation of Lineaments .............................................................. 209 12.6 Geophysical Resistivity Survey .......................................................... 221 12.7 Results and Discussion ........................................................................ 222 12.8 Conclusion ............................................................................................. 224 Acknowledgments ......................................................................................... 226 References ........................................................................................................ 226
and water resource engineers for groundwater exploration, and several researchers have adopted this technique to delineate groundwater potential zones in hard crystalline terrains (Farnsworth et al. 1984; Gupta et al. 1989; Ramasamy et al., 1989; Waters et al., 1990; Boeckh, 1992; Anbazhagan, 1993; Greenbaum et al., 1993; Gustaffson, 1993; Ramasamy and Anbazhagan, 1994; Ramasamy et al., 1996; Saraf and Chaudhary, 1998; Srinivasa Rao et al., 2000; Madan Jha et al., 2007). Groundwater exploration in hard rock always requires an integrated approach owing to the heterogeneity of the aquifer systems (Nag, 1998; Pratap et al., 2000; Srivastava and Bhattacharya, 2000; Sarkar et al., 2001; Subba Rao et al., 2001). Sometimes, detailed hydrogeological investigation, geophysical resistivity survey, and aquifer characteristic studies, etc., have not yielded satisfactory results in identifying groundwater targets.
