GEOSPATIAL ASSESSMENT OF POTENTIAL GROUNDWATER ZONES WITHIN IGEDE EKITI, EKITI STATE, NIGERIA.

Groundwater happens to be an accessible and renewable source of water, and so has to be monitored. A Multi-criteria Decision approach was utilized which allows for data fusion of various thematic criteria using the Analytical Hierarchical approach to assign weight to the selected criteria peculiar to Igede-Ekiti, of Irepodun/Ifelodun Local Government Area. The study aims to carry out a geospatial assessment of the groundwater potential zone within Igede Ekiti, Ekiti state. Geology, Rainfall, Digital Elevation Model, Land Use land cover, Nominal difference in water Index (NDWI), Slope and Lineament density were selected to depict the potential groundwater zones, of which geospatial assessments were carried out. Selected groundwater sources in the form of boreholes and well were afterwards used to ground truth and depict the distribution of groundwater sources within the study area. The ArcMap software’s weight overlay Analysis was used to present the output in the form of a Potential Groundwater zones (PGWZ) map, with the Groundwater sources, wells and boreholes, indicating that they were well dispersed within the study area, but more densely situated around the built-up class of the study area. The results indicate that high PGWZ was more prevalent than the other classes, as the classes were distributed into very high, high and low PGWZ. The very high PGWZ covered 7%, the high PGWZ 55% and the Low PGWZ, 39%. The study can be used for further physical planning and decision-making for policymakers. Further research into the Spatio-temporal behaviour of groundwater potential is recommended. Keywords: Analytical Hierarchical process (AHP), Groundwater, Remote Sensing, data fusion