investigating the spatial variability of groundwater table in barkhar plain, esfahan

groundwater is the main water resource for domestic and agricultural uses in iran. so real-time mapping of groundwater depth can guide to have a proper exploitation of groundwater. this study was conducted to investigate the spatial variability of depth to groundwater in barkhar plain in esfahan using geostatistical methods. in this regard, the measurements of groundwater depth between july and november of 2007, 2009 and 2011 belonging to 36 observation wells were used. data samples were first checked for any error or mistake then the spatial correlation of data was investigated. groundwater depth values at un-sampled locations were estimated using the interpolation methods including ordinary kriging (ok) and inverse distance weighting (idw) with distance powers of 1, 2, 3 and 4. the performances of selected interpolators were evaluated using the cross-validation technique and root mean square error (rmse) and mean bias error (mbe) indices. the results showed that idw2 for july and november 2009, idw4 for july 2011 and ok for all other cases were the most accurate approaches as they had the lowest amounts of rmse and were close to zero amounts of mbe and consequently had the best results in estimation of groundwater depth. the generated maps of groundwater depth showed that depth to groundwater was lower in the southeastern parts and higher in the rest of the study region.