Assessing the suitability and quality zoning of groundwater resources of Naqadeh plain for drinking, agriculture, and industrial purposes

The Aquifer of Naqadeh plain, located in the southwestern part of Urmia Lake, providing water supply of the area. In order to evaluate and classify water resources quality, 33 samples were taken from operational wells in June 2016. Hydrogeochemical characteristics and concentration of heavy metals, major and minor ions were measured by means of standard methods. Feasibility studies for various consumption of groundwater were investigated using graphical methods and quality criteria of Schuler (drinking), Wilcox (agriculture) and Langelier (industrial) classification. Based on the available information, the spatial distribution of the effective parameters using GIS and geostatistical interpolation method (Kriging) was applied to generate water quality zoning maps. In this regard, the final maps of quality, zoning were prepared after creating the raster layers of the effective parameters, classification, and integration. According to the results the hardness degree of drinking water of all samples was high, and also the concentration of some parameters was more than drinking (WHO) and agriculture (FAO) water standard, so inappropriate quality of these resources should be considered. The evaluation of industrial water quality showed scaling property of 61% and corrosive property of 39% of samples. In addition, the agricultural water quality illustrated that 46% and 39% of water samples were placed in good and average quality, respectively. Analyzing the quality, zoning maps with geological information, land use and distribution of industrial units were carried out in the plain and the results show that quality of groundwater is inappropriate mainly in the northern and eastern parts of the plain.