Assessment of trends and multi-decadal changes in groundwater level in parts of the Malwa region, Punjab, India

Due to spatial unevenness in rainfall, groundwater dependency for irrigation has increased exponentially, which poses a challenge its sustainability. Hence, the long-term behaviour of level (GWL) fluctuations needs be understood better management water resources and formulating new action plan. semi-arid climatic condition, most agricultural lands Malwa region Punjab India depend on irrigation. The present study focuses multi-decadal trend estimation spatio-temporal variations GWL changes using geostatistics analyzing standardized depth index (SDWLI) method over region. For this study, data 90 observation wells/piezometers 21 years (1997–2018) were analyzed. wells classified into different clusters according fluctuation rate hierarchical cluster analysis. each well's was analyzed with Modified Mann–Kendall (MMK) test Sen's slope. analysis results show that possess significantly declining during 1997–2018. variation maps reveal more than 30 % tubewells eastern part have seen an average depletion about 40 cm/year both seasons (pre- post-monsoon). In contrast, southwestern shows evident rise last two decades; rising causes severe waterlogging problems monsoon period. Over years, we observed 20 had study's result raises concern resources' future highly groundwater-dependent