Abstract:

Global warming and climate change put excessive pressure on the use of groundwater resources. As the demand for water consumption in fields such as agriculture and industry increases worldwide, the need for the modeling and evaluation of groundwater potential and quality efficiency increases accordingly. Nowadays, methods based on multi-criteria decision-making techniques such as geographic information systems (GIS), analytical hierarchy process (AHP), fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (F-AHP) and ELECTRE have begun to be used rapidly in the field of groundwater. These methods are of great importance because they reveal information faster. They are also a tool for the communication and meaning of information. In the light of this information, this study was carried out in order to model and evaluate the groundwater potential and quality of Van, Türkiye. In order to evaluate the groundwater potential of the Van province basin, remote sensing data with AHP and Fuzzy AHP methods, which are GIS-based MCDM programs, were used. Eight thematic maps such as precipitation, slope, soil texture, land use/land cover, geology, geomorphology, drainage density, drainage density and fault density were created. These thematic parameters were graded and weighted in the AHP method according to their effects on the groundwater potential. Then, five different groundwater recharge potential regions were classified as very good (8%), good (17%), moderate (43.37%), poor (23.03%) and very poor (9.6%). The evidence obtained by validating the results is in line with flow calculation studies showing that groundwater flows from the south to the northeast, middle and north to the southwest of the basin. The evidence obtained by validating the results is consistent with the flow calculation values showing that the groundwater basin flows from south to northeast, center and north to southwest of the study area. The validation shows that the method applied for the study area gives a meaningful and reliable result.

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