Abstract
Sea water intrusion is a growing concern for coastal and nearby areas. The application of ground water and its over exploitation is the main cause of sea water intrusion. Ground water is being pumped from the aquifers and those aquifers are hydraulically connected with sea. The pumping induces a hydraulic gradient which cause the moving of sea water towards ground water in that excessive pumping area and it aggravates due to reduction of fresh water inflows. As the use of pure ground water is highly essential for developmental uses, it is necessary to determine the sea water intrusion particularly for coastal areas and its nearby cities. The spatial distribution of sea water intrusion of Bhubaneswar city and the coastal city Puri, Odisha is identified here in this research. The vulnerability of sea water intrusion has been studied at Bhubaneswar city, the capital of Odisha, India including the coastal city Puri, using GIS based GALDIT method. The six important factors are Ground water occurrence (G); Aquifer Hydraulic Conductivity (A); Depth of ground water Level above mean sea level (L); Distance from Shore (D); Impact of existing sea water intrusion (I); Aquifer Thickness (T) are taken into consideration. The data are ranked and different weights and ratings are allocated as per their contribution to salination and the thematic maps are overlayed using GIS in order to make the vulnerability analysis. The study shows that, the Bhubaneswar city has very less vulnerability to sea water intrusion up to the time period of analysis. But Puri district has high vulnerable to sea water intrusion. Here also the sensitivity analysis is performed to have a proper knowledge about the most and least sensitive parameter for the sea water intrusion using map removal sensitivity analysis.