Central Idea: The Jal Shakti Ministry is working on an ambitious plan to deploy a vast network of groundwater sensors to continuously relay information on groundwater levels and contamination.

What is Groundwater?

• Groundwater is the water found underground in the cracks and spaces in soil, sand and rock.
• It is stored in and moves slowly through geologic formations of soil, sand and rocks called aquifers.
• Aquifers are typically made up of gravel, sand, sandstone, or fractured rock, like limestone.
• Water can move through these materials because they have large connected spaces that make them permeable.
• Aquifers, hand-dug wells, and artesian wells are different types of sources of groundwater.

Sensors-based Groundwater Monitoring

• Under this new initiative, around 16,000-17,000 digital water level recorders will be connected to piezometers in the wells to transmit information digitally.
• In the next three years, the CGWB aims to increase its network from the existing 26,000 to about 40,000.
• When combined with similar networks possessed by other institutions, India will have about 67,000 digitally recordable units to monitor groundwater dynamics.

Significance of the move

• This would make groundwater visible much the same way as air quality and meteorological variables
• The information will be publicly accessible.
• It will potentially provide groundwater forecasts to farmers that would be useful for sowing and updated advisories that can influence groundwater extraction policies by states

Why monitor groundwater?

• Nitrate contamination – a result of the use of nitrogenous fertilizers – has been observed in some regions
• Groundwater contamination, mostly “geogenic” (natural), hasn’t significantly changed over the years.
• But nitrate contamination and fluoride and arsenic contamination have been observed in some regions and states.

Present system of monitoring

• The Central Groundwater Board currently relies on a network of about 26 thousand groundwater observation wells.
• It requires technicians to manually measure the state of groundwater in a region.

Groundwater Extraction in India

• The total annual groundwater recharge in the country has been assessed as 437.60 billion cubic meters (BCM)
• The annual extractable groundwater resource has been assessed as 398.08 bcm, with actual extraction of 239.16 bcm
• The average stage of groundwater extraction for the country as a whole works out to be about 60.08%, and anything above 70% is considered “critical”

Also read

Groundwater Extraction Lowest in 18 years

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