Elsevier

Chemosphere

Volume 291, Part 3, March 2022, 132924
Chemosphere

Analytical strategies to sense water stress level: An analysis of ground water fluctuations sensing SDGs under pandemic scenario

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.132924Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Water fluctuations is directly linked with the consumption and wastage of water resource.

  • Groundwater has emerged as a critical resource for both human well-being and the country's economic prosperity.

  • Groundwater must be considered when planning and implementing SDGs.

  • During the epidemic disease pandemic appearance is taken as a burden on water reservoirs because during this disease the demand, consumption & wastage of water rises enough.

  • Groundwater must be considered when planning and implementing SDGs by making such linkages more apparent and describing their strength and direction.

Abstract

Groundwater fluctuation is directly linked with the consumption and wastage of water sources during the pandemic interval. That is why water resource planners directly target water resource and sanitation systems in line with the sustainable development goals (SDGs) concept. In this study, District Multan is designated as a study area with 85 distinct station points data sets from four zones taken to pursue this massive investigation. The data sets are studied analytically and graphically to explore the relationships among critical variables like population, average water consumption, groundwater elevation, water table depth, total consumption, wastage of water during the pandemic days, etc. For in-depth analysis, the statistical approaches are employed on these massive data sets to reveal the trend among each dataset point to generate predictive models. The results revealed that groundwater reservoirs and levels are continuously declining on an annual basis in the meantime, the water consumption and extraction are increasing simultaneously. The consumption during pandemic days has been increased so much at the same time the wastage and total consumption of water is rising a lot in contrast to previous daily consumption and water demand. The coefficient of determination (R-square) values vary from 0.41 to 0.93 in this investigation. It will help the utilization of developed models and water-providing organizations to forecast groundwater instabilities for the future. Moreover, the situation in the study area is very alarming in terms of water stress conditions. This study will help the decision-making agencies to produce a policy following the SDGs concept to control water consumption and higher extraction.

Introduction

It is shown that according to the prediction analysis globally, the use of water in urban areas in the year 2050 will be approximately equal to the total water used by the world by 2004 (Song et al., 2004). These predictions are disturbing and warning an alarming burden on urban sources, especially the water. The water utilization globally by urban people has been increased more than 20 times during the last century. In 1900 it was 200 × 108 m3, in 1950 it was increased to 600 × 108 m3, in 1975, it was 1500 × 108 m3 while in 2000, it jumped to 4400 × 108 m3 (Alló and Loureiro, 2013). Habit is an individual's behavior influenced by inheritance, upbringing, etc., while practice refers to a collective response towards a situation or a condition as the residential consumers' attitude evolves to be positive for water conservation, people's habits seem improving in this regard (Millock and Nauges, 2010; Beal et al., 2011). Although public awareness about water conservation seems increasing analytically, this has seen to make minimal changes in people's habits (Hamilton, 1985; Millock and Nauges, 2010). The world map related to water stress is shown in Fig. 1. In 2040, Pakistan will lies on an extremely high-stress country that will have a high proportion of extractions to supply which will indicate the alarming situation for Pakistani residence.

The key objective of this study is to examine the fluctuation and consumption of groundwater during the pandemic days. To better judge, the groundwater level of district Multan, huge data of 14 years is to be undertaken and a deep analysis of this data is done by employing numerous techniques. The study reveals numerous targets that include; (i) To understand the relationship among population and water consumption of district Multan for 78 years interval (1951–2028); (ii) To analyze the 14 years (2005–2018) groundwater table fluctuation of district Multan; (iii) To find out the effect of pre & post-monsoon season on groundwater reservoirs of district Multan in addition to their recharge capacity; (iv) To evaluate the water consumption during a pandemic period at numerous population percentages (25–100%) of district Multan; (v) Additionally, the wastage and total consumption growth of groundwater during pandemic also estimated; (vi) To establish a model for future forecasting of groundwater oscillation for District Multan. All these analyses become true through the help of a massive amount of Multan District data. All data were assessed hypothetically, analytically, graphically, and statistically by employing numerous techniques. A huge amount of literature review related to this study (e.g., groundwater, pandemic, etc.) is given below for a better understanding of the water situation in Pakistan.

Section snippets

Water stress concept

For human beings around the globe, the basic key component for surviving is water, and the next element is oxygen as its weight is around 40–60% in the human body. For drinking aspects, the ground and surface water must meet the norms of the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as appropriate country guidelines and specifications. It's the government's responsibility to provide safe and healthy water to every resident, but mostly in developing countries, this kind of water is not provided to

Materials and methods

In this study, a comprehensive methodology has been adopted to analyze the water stress level of the study area based on groundwater level data. A groundwater level chart has been developed to analyze water distribution and consumption. The methodology flowchart has been shown in Fig. 3.

Study area population growth

The amount of population directly affects the natural sources of each country. The irregular growth and consumption of sources may harm the community. According to Multan Development Authority (MDA), the study area's population is shown in Fig. 6.(MDA, 2020).

Due to the massive population growth rate of the study area, the population is increasing very rapidly. The population in 1951 was only around 0.75 million people after 1951 the population expanded and by 2028 it is expected to be around 6

Conclusions and recommendations

This study successfully investigates water stress impact with a focus on sustainable development goals(SDGs) to target a safe and sustainable life pattern. This issue is rising in developing cities with an increase in population and shortage of resources. A set of targets among 17 major sustainable goals are related to water as water is of key importance containing the target of sustainable future. Further, out of these seventeen goals, goal 6 is related to water, and its sub-section (6.1–6.6),

Limitation of the study

This research is based on groundwater data and so limited to analysis based on one source of water, in future studies, other sources of water may also be included. Water resource management involves all types of water sources and can be analyzed on a similar pattern. This study provides guidelines to research in the field of water resources and provides guidelines to follow the pattern of study for water stress analysis. It can further involve the devolution of sources into clean and polluted

Author contribution statement

Ahsan Nawaz: Conceptualization, writing the draft, Syyed Adnan Raheel Shah: Methodology, Xing Su: Supervision, Afzal Ahmed Dar: data collection, Zhongfu Qin: Funding acquisition and editing, Gadah albashar: Resources.

Funding's

This research is funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (71971196) and supported by Zhejiang Univeristy, China.

Declaration of competing interest

Authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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