Groundwater Pathways In Fractured Heterogeneous Granitic Aquifers - A Hydrochemistry Survey In The Sassandra Watershed (Inland Ivory Coast

Hydrogeochemical data and Landsat images are used to characterize the groundwater flow in a complex fractured granitic aquifer system located at the South-West of Ivory Coast (West Africa). The specific processing of the Landsat ETM+ images allows producing a detailed map of faults having length more than 3 km. The map is integrated with other data sources into a geographical information system (GIS) in order to identify areas favourable to groundwater sampling in fractured rock. The results of statistical analyses, as applied to hydrochemical data set clearly indicate that the groundwater of the study region is principally of Ca-Mg-HCO3 and Na-K-HCO3 types. The Ca-HCO3 type waters occur in areas of recharge (generally topographically higher area) i.e. where recharge occurs relatively fast. These waters generally have lower pH and EC values. The recharge occurs through preferential pathways such as alongside dykes and sills and the various fracture and joint patterns that transect the study area. The Na- HCO3 and Na-SO4 type waters occur in discharging and static regimes (the lower lying areas) where evaporation and cation exchange are the dominant processes. Ground waters are mostly oxidizing in character, and clearly unsaturated with respect to calcite, reflecting the small amount of carbonate in the aquifer. A few samples are reducing, with low NO3 and high dissolved Fe2+ and Mn2+ concentration and occur in the valley area. These reducing waters are thought to have experienced a deeper circulation and longer residence time in which reducing reactions have proceeded, with groundwater discharge along the valleys bottom. The chemistry of major ions, here applied to fractured aquifers, turns to be a powerful tool when carefully compared with a map of fault traces. We obtain a sufficient knowledge of the aquifer heterogeneity prior to realize a zoning of the region, based on cells with homogeneous hydrodynamic behaviour in which local permeability ellipses are computed. Thus, we characterize the geographical variability of the permeability anisotropy in this segment of the Sassandra watershed.