Groundwater Levels and Lithology in the Junagadh District of Saurashtra, Gujarat

Over the past two decades, the growth dynamism in Gujarat agriculture come from input intensive land use and farm management practices, which resulted in over-exploitation of groundwater.But apart from this agricultural aspect, in this paper we have tried to focus the fluctuations of groundwater levels of Junagadh district of Saurashtra, Gujarat and correlate the same with the lithology. The region of Saurashtra is dominated by Deccan Trap rocks and some part of it by Quaternary milliolite. These basaltic rocks are devoid of primary porosity, however groundwater is available in large quantity mainly owing to secondary porosity that is inherent in weathered basaltic rocks due to profound columnar joints and vesicles at a shallow depth. The Quaternary milliolite with high porosity is found to occur around the coastal belts of Junagadh district of Saurahtra region. The groundwater levels in 145 number of observation wells of the study area have been analyzed , in the pre and post monsoon periods of around twelve years from the year 2002 to 2013 and correlation of groundwater fluctuations with respect to the lithology has been developed using GIS platform.