Abstract: The exploitation of shale gas requires large amount of water for hydraulic fracturing on one hand, and easily pollutes groundwater on the other. Estimating the abundance of groundwater in shale gas exploitation area is of vital significance for the protection and utilization of groundwater. In this research, an assessment model for the water abundance of aquifer in karst region is built integrating multi-source information using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The influential factors of the model include unit water yield, permeability coefficient, coring rate, aquifer thickness, fault and fold distribution, and fault scale index. The weights of these factors are given, and semantic maps of these factors are acquired based on the information processing and spatial display functions of GIS technology. The zoning map of water abundance of aquifer can be obtained through fusion of the aforementioned semantic maps. GIS-based information fusion is effective in reflecting the nonlinear dynamics of aquifer’s water abundance which is controlled by multiple factors with complicated mechanism. The research method offers a reference for the groundwater utilization and protection in shale gas exploitation area.

Key words: shale gas, water abundance, aquifer, multi-source information fusion, GIS, AHP, assessment model