Impact Assessment of Mining Activities on Surface and Sub-Surface Water Condition of Ramgarh, Jharkhand, India using Geospatial Techniques

This work illustrates the impact of excessive mining on the precipitation trends and ground water condition of the Ramgarh district over a period of 12 years (2007-2018). The Landsat 8 and Landsat TM- 5 data is processed under Arc-GIS in order to compare the LULC maps. Out of 7 classified classes, the Results obtained indicate the expansion of the mining area, barren land, settlement, and water body by 10.95%, 10.07%, 3.44%, and 0.43%, while a reduction in the forest, fallow, and crop land by 11.24%, 11.31%, and 2.34% respectively. The TRMM 3B43 data is used to trace out the annual precipitation values of 5 selected raster location points through Arc GIS. The annual precipitation under the mining regions (lower Mandu, Ramgarh, Bhurkunda) shows a decreasing trend. The Mann-Kendall test and Sen's slope estimator method is used in order to evaluate the ground water pattern in the pre- and post-monsoonal conditions. The Mandu block, the densest mining region of the district with the positive Z values of 1.714 and 0.137 in the pre- and post- monsoon period shows a decrease in the ground water level at the rates of 0.103 m/year and 0.017 m/year, respectively. The continuous rise in the mining activities has created an alarming shift of weather pattern and deteriorated ground water table in Ramgarh.