Groundwater Quality Evaluation for Productive Uses— The Afram Plains Area, Ghana

Abstract

Groundwater is the most widely used water resource in the Afram Plains area, Ghana. The objective of this study was to determine the distribution of fluoride, sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), and salinity (EC) in groundwater from the different aquifers in the Afram Plains area. The distribution of these parameters would enable a determination of the quality of groundwater from the different aquifer units for use in households and irrigation purposes. The inverse distance weighting, interpolator with a power of 2 was applied to 143 data points of each parameter to generate prediction maps for fluoride, SAR, and EC in the area. The distribution maps from this study show that the shale aquifers that underlie the southwestern sections of the area have the highest levels of fluoride, SAR, and EC. A narrow strip of the shale aquifer in the southwestern region produces groundwater whose fluoride level