Identification of Suitable Site-specific Recharge Areas using Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) Technique: A Case Study of Iranshahr Basin (Iran)

Iranshahr Basin is located in the Sistan and Baluchistan province, subject to severe drought excessive groundwater utilization. Over-reliance on resources this area has led aquifer drawdowns socio-economic problems. The present study aimed identify appropriate sites for Artificial Recharge Groundwater (ARG) a single platform by applying GIS fuzzy logic spatial modeling. Three stages were performed. In stage one, nine factors affecting ARG collected based literature review. two, geology, soil, land-use layers digitized from existing maps. Some such as rainfall, unsaturated thickness, water quality, transmissivity data imported ArcGIS environments, their surface maps made Ordinary Kriging (OK) method. three, parameters standardized with membership functions, GAMMA 0.5 overlay model was applied aggregation parameters. Results showed that 72.8%, 16.7%, 7.7%, 2.5% of areas classified unsuitable, moderate, suitable, perfectly suitable planning recharge site. Subsequently, minimum required regarding possible errors review determined six (A–E) higher priority. Then, recommended unsuitable/suitable validated omitted using some more detailed views. Finally, two (E F) omitted, four (A, B, C, D) future artificial planning.