A forensic look into the lineament, vegetation, groundwater linkage: Study of Ranchi District, Jharkhand (India)

Lineaments have a genetic relationship with the formation of various topographic features, such as cliffs, slope breaks, narrow linear ridges, gorges and stream valley segments. The present study investigates the linkage between lineament, vegetation and groundwater. It explains an approach for lineaments extraction using shaded relief images from CartoDEM. The study area is Ranchi District, Jharkhand (India). Based on azimuth angle of the light source two shaded relief images (Lineament Analysis A with azimuth angles 0°, 45°, 90°, 135° and Lineament Analysis B with azimuth angles 180°, 225°, 270°, 315°) are created. Mann-Kendall (MK) method was used for positive and negative trend analysis in weather data over the study area. The proposed methodology is focused mainly on relationships between the extracted lineaments and multiple vegetation indices. Multiple vegetation indices on include the following: Difference Vegetation Index (DVI), Green Difference Vegetation Index (GDVI), Green Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (GNDVI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Ratio Vegetation Index (RVI) and Green Ratio Vegetation Index (GRVI), are generated from LANDSAT 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite image. The NDVI and RVI maps had moderate correlation (R2) with lineament analysis A and B extracted from multi-directional images. Finally, results were validated for the study area by using Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), and groundwater level data. Groundwater data shows indicative correlation with lineament maps (A & B). This analysis demonstrates the potential applicability of this methodology.