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Groundwater potential modeling over the eastern part of Ghana’s Northern Region using evidence belief functions and weight of evidence

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Abstract

In arid and semi-arid areas such as Ghana’s northern regions, water scarcity is prevalent particularly during the dry seasons (between the middle of November to April) and thus, the yearly demand for groundwater during these periods is very high in these areas. Hence, the delineation of prospective zones of groundwater resource occurrence offers an invaluable response towards the mitigation of the water scarcity issues that arise particularly during the dry seasons. In view of this, the employability capacity of the evidence belief functions (EBF) and weight of evidence (WOE) approaches towards the preparation of groundwater prospectivity models (GPM) have been assessed and compared in the eastern part of Ghana’s Northern Region. In carrying out the aforesaid task, multiple groundwater-related geospatial layers comprising drainage density (DD), digital elevation model (DEM), geology, lineament density (LD), slope, soil type, stream power index (SPI), topographic position index (TPI), topographic roughness index (TRI) and topographic wetness index (TWI) sourced from geophysical, geological, geomorphological and remote sensing datasets were used as inputs for both the EBF and WOE models. Inventory data comprising 230 existing locations of productive groundwater boreholes and wells, obtained from historical data and field surveys were applied. 161 of the groundwater inventory data prepared were randomly selected to train and subsequently generate groundwater prospectivity models based on the EBF and WOE approaches. The remaining 69 groundwater inventory data points were used as testing data to determine the efficacy of the GPM produced based on the two aforementioned data integration approaches using the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve. From the area under the ROC (AUC) scores obtained, the predictive performance of the GPM based on the EBF and WOE approaches were respectively 0.96 and 0.98. The validation results of the models show the ability of the models to correctly predict the potential of groundwater sources in relation to the geology, with the Bunya sandstone member and the Afram formation towards the eastern part of the study area verified as the most producible lithologies for groundwater occurrence. It is envisaged that the outputs developed in this study would be useful for planners to plan and manage groundwater resources effectively, especially in difficult geologic terranes with limited success of boreholes.

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Data availability

Data would be made available upon request to the corresponding author (eadzikunoo@ug.edu.gh).

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Acknowledgements

Authors wish to show their appreciation to the Ghana Geological Survey Authority (GGSA) and the United States Geological Survey Earth Resources Center (USGS-EROS) for making data available for this study. Many thanks also to the University of Ghana-Carnegie Corporation and Building a New Generation Africa (BaNGA-Africa) for their support in making this study a success.

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No funding was obtained for this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana

    Eric Dominic Forson

  2. Department of Earth Science, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana

    Elikplim Abla Dzikunoo, Prince Ofori Amponsah & Samuel Nunoo

  3. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-Institute for Industrial Research, Accra, Ghana

    Theophilus Yaw Amponsah

  4. University of Tasmania, CODES – ARC Centre of Excellence in Ore Deposits and School of Earth Science, Hobart, TAS, 7001, Australia

    Eric Dominic Forson

  5. Department of Physics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

    Aboagye Menyeh

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  1. Eric Dominic Forson
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Contributions

E.D.F and A.M contributed to the conception and design of the study. Data acquisition, data processing, analysis and interpretation of results were also carried out by E.D.F, S.N and T.Y.A. The first draft of the manuscript was written by E.D.F, P.O.A and E.A.D. All authors (E.D.F, E.A.D, P.O.A, A.A, S.N, and T.Y.A) read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Elikplim Abla Dzikunoo.

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Communicated by: H. Babaie

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Forson, E.D., Dzikunoo, E.A., Amponsah, P.O. et al. Groundwater potential modeling over the eastern part of Ghana’s Northern Region using evidence belief functions and weight of evidence. Earth Sci Inform 17, 2737–2753 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-024-01317-3

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