REGIONAL INTERPRETATION OF AEROMAGNETIC DATA FOR GROUNDWATER EXPLORATION IN CAPRICORN DISTRICT, LIMPOPO,

The study area is located in the northern Limpopo Province of South Africa. The aim of the study was to identify groundwater targets that could assist in improving the quality of life of rural com-munities. Airborne magnetic data was interpreted to identify dykes, lineaments and magnetic sources that could control groundwater occurrences. The length, parallelism of magnetic lineaments in some parts of the area suggests emplacement under tensional stress field along pre-existing zones of weakness. Lineaments extracted from the airborne magnetic data and satellite imagery data were super-imposed on drainage lines to investigate the relative importance of structural features controlling the distribution of surface water and groundwater. In addition, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was used in identifying areas of vegetation banding, which enable inference of fracture zones and high moisture content in the soil. The study shows that the northern and central eastern parts of the study area are more prospective for groundwater occurrence, while the southern and south-western parts of the project area are dry with no surface manifestation of groundwater. Integration of lineaments derived from aeromagnetic data and Landsat imagery as well with the NDVI was able to identify areas with a potential for groundwater occurrence at a regional scale. Key Words Borehole yield, normalized difference vegetation index, digital eleva-tion model, magnetic, groundwate