The impact of land use and land cover change on groundwater recharge in northwestern Bangladesh

Groundwater recharge is affected by various anthropogenic activities, land use and land cover (LULC) change among these. The long-term temporal and seasonal changes in LULC have a substantial influence on groundwater flow dynamics. Therefore, assessment of the impacts of LULC changes on recharge is necessary for the sustainable management of groundwater resources. The objective of this study is to examine the effects of LULC changes on groundwater recharge in the northwestern part of Bangladesh. Spatially distributed monthly groundwater recharge was simulated using a semi-physically based water balance model. Long-term temporal LULC change analysis was conducted using LULC maps from 2006 to 2016, while wet and dry LULC maps were used to examine seasonal changes. The results show that the impervious built-up area has increased by 80.3%, whereas vegetated land cover has decreased by 16.4% over the study period. As a result, groundwater recharge in 2016 has decreased compared to the level seen in 2006. However, the decrease in recharge due to long-term temporal LULC changes is very small at the basin scale (2.6 mm/year), although the impact on regional level is larger (17.1 mm/year) due to urbanization. Seasonal LULC variations also affect recharge due to the higher potential for dry seasonal LULC compared to the wet seasonal LULC, a substantial difference (20.6 mm/year). The results reveal important information about the groundwater system and its response to land cover changes in northwestern Bangladesh.