Assessment of landcover impacts on the groundwater quality using hydrogeochemical and geospatial techniques

Groundwater quality is significantly impacted by urbanization and land use land cover (LULC) changes. The current study investigated the impact of LULC on groundwater quality in Quetta city, Baluchistan province, Pakistan. During the years 2015 and 2021, a total of 58 groundwater samples were collected from drinking wells for chemical analysis. The hydrogeochemistry of groundwater was investigated using Gibbs diagrams, Piper diagrams, and spatial distribution maps. The water quality trend was depicted using the Wilcox, USSL diagram, and Water Quality Index (WQI) from 2015 to 2021. The LULC analysis of Quetta was carried out on Google Earth Engine's cloud-computing platform using imagery from the Sentinel-2 satellite with low cloud cover (