Investigation of the aquifer vulnerability in the Bakirçay basin, Turkey

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mühendislik Fakültesi, Jeoloji Mühendisliği Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2022

Tezin Dili: İngilizce

Öğrenci: MERVE ATASU

Danışman: Mehmet Zeki Çamur

Özet:

Intensifying industrial, population and agricultural activities have increased the contamination possibility on highly demanded groundwater resources. Bakırçay located at lower North Aegean region of Turkey is one of those basins which has been subjected to such activities.  Therefore, aquifers located in the basin are vulnerable. The main purpose of this study is to quantify the contamination vulnerability of the groundwater resources present in the Bakırçay Basin. The DRASTIC methodology which was modified by integrating the land use map of the study area, was applied. The DRASTIC includes hydrogeological factors which control surface infiltration of waters to the aquifer: depth to groundwater (D), net recharge (R), aquifer media (A), soil media (S), topography slope (T), impact of vadose zone media (I), and hydraulic conductivity of the aquifer (C). Available hydrogeological data from various sources for the basin and the data provided from the groundwater flow model established to acquire some parameters due to missing data were utilized to generate groundwater vulnerability map using geographic information system (GIS) tools. The results of this study show that 4.9% of the study area has very high, 20.2% high, 6.2% medium, 24.5% low and the remaining 44.3% of the area has very low contamination vulnerability of the groundwater resources.