A survey on spatial variations of groundwater quality in Semnan/Sorkheh plain using geostatistical techniques

Nowadays, water resources scarcity has become one of the most important issues in arid and semi arid regions including Iran which makes it necessary to optimize the utilization of the limited resources. This research surveyed the variations of EC, TDS, Cl-, SO4--, Na+ for an eleven-year period base on the data collected from selected wells of Semnan Plain. In order to select the appropriate model to fit to experimental variogram, Residual Mean Square Error was used. Several geostatistical approaches such as simple kriging, ordinary kriging, simple cokriging, and ordinary cokriging as well as other deterministic interpolation methods including Inverse Distance Weighing (IDW) with different powers were considered. Then, validation approach and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) criteria were considered to determine the most appropriate interpolation technique. Meanwhile, cokriging method was selected as the fit method for qualitative parameters which illustrated the variations of groundwater quality in almost 67% of the cases. Comparison of quality parameters of spatial zoning maps showed that the rate of these parameters was developing in the core shape to the selected wells 15 and 13 and also, it had an increasing trend in plain boundaries for an eleven-year period. But there were no significant changes in the centers of plains. According to the results, lithology, unsustainable harvesting of wells, increased evaporation and thus reduced level of ground water and inappropriate methods of irrigation and agriculture were identified as the most effective factors.