Executive Summary : | Groundwater availability, movement, modeling, and management in the consolidated formations (hard rocks) is quite challenging and poorly understood in the Indian context. The fracture characteristics such as density, connectivity, aperture, as well their interaction with the soil matrix play a crucial role in the representation of aquifer properties, and delineation of preferential paths. This proposal is aimed at understanding the hydrogeology of the weathered to fractured geologic media (in specific, granitic aquifers) using extensive laboratory and field experiments. We aimed to perform geophysical, tracer, pumping, and hydraulic tomography experiments to understand the sub-surface characteristics, represent hydro-stratigraphic units, delineate major yielding fractures, and estimate the aquifer parameters. In addition, we evaluate the relevance of various groundwater modeling strategies (such as equivalent porous medium, dual continuum, discrete fracture networks) within the study area. Results of our study can help in designing the strategies for groundwater assessment, management, conservation and regulation in the fractured granitic aquifers. In brief, the following tasks are proposed in this work: Task 1: Fabrication of flow-cell and laboratory sandbox experiments Task 2: Geophysical experiments for Hydrogeologic characterization Task 3: Tracer experiments for Fracture connectivity and network delineation Task 4: Conventional pumping experiments for fracture characterization Task 5: Hydraulic Tomographic (HT) experiments for fracture characterization Task 6: Geophysical and HT inversion for parameter estimation Task 7: Numerical modeling of fractured aquifers. The successful completion of this project is expected to improve the groundwater resource estimation process, as well as to design the framework / guidelines on groundwater withdrawals in the consolidated (hard tock) formations, which is currently lacking in Indian context. |