Zoning of groundwater contaminated by Nitrate using geostatistics method (case study: Bahabad plain, Yazd, Iran)

Groundwater quality management is one of the most important issues in many arid and semi-arid regions, including Iran.Nitrate (NO3-) is one of the most common anions contaminating groundwater. This study aimed to range nitrateconcentrations in water resources in Bahabad plain in Yazd province. To evaluate the nitrate data in this descriptive study,260 nitrate samples from 13 wells in Bahabad were assessed from 2003 to 2013. The two interpolation techniques ofkriging and inverse distance weighting (IDW) were used to obtain the spatial distribution of groundwater qualityparameters by means of Arcview GIS 10 software. The results of this study showed that the kriging method is moreaccurate than IDW for groundwater quality mapping, based on the lower root mean square error (RMSE) of kriging.Nitrate levels in samples from regional wells were lower than standard levels for Iran and the world. However, nitratecontamination tended to increase from 2003 to 2013. Furthermore, the greatest nitrate contamination was found in thesouthern part of Bahabad. In conclusion, kriging seems to be an appropriate method for estimating nitrate levels ingroundwater in Bahabad. We recommend action be taken in order to stop the increasing trend of groundwater nitratecontamination in this area.