Site Selection of the Artificial Groundwater Recharge Using Multiple Criteria Decision Making and Geographic Information System (Case Study: Hormozgan Province, Shemil Ashkara Plain)

Ground water resources of Iran are depleted because of an increase in water demand. Since, in Iran, precipitation is inadequate and occasionally results in violent runoff, artificial ground water recharge can be an appropriate method to optimize use of runoff in recharging the groundwater. In the operation of ground water recharge, Choosing criteria and appropriate method for suitable site selection is important. In this paper, factors such as: slope, depth of groundwater, land use and electrical conductivity of water, geology and potential of spate are considered to determine the areas most suitable for groundwater recharge in Shemil Ashkara plain in the southern part of Iran. Thematic layers for the mentioned parameters were prepared, classified, weighted and integrated in a GIS environment by means of Simple Additive Weighted and Analytic Hierarchical Process methods. The results of each method were multiplied by constraint map and their outputs were classified in four categories: constrained, unsuitable, moderately suitable and suitable. Comparison of the maps produced by these two different methods show that Analytic Hierarchical Process beside Eigenvector technique creates more reliable results.