Implications of Watershed Management Practices on Water Availability Using Hydrus 1D Model in Aba Gerima Watershed, Upper Blue Nile basin, Ethiopia
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2022-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Despite significant improvements in environmental protection and watershed management, there is still a problem of land degradation and natural resource depletion in Ethiopia. The main objective of this thesis was to assess the water availability implications of watershed management practices in Aba Gerima watershed, located in upper Blue Nile basin, Lake Tana sub basin, Ethiopia. Soil moisture, meteorological, ecological and ground water level data were collected and analyzed with Hydrus 1D model to estimate hydrological components such as surface flux, bottom flux, soil water storage, Evaporation, root water uptake and infiltration of each of the eight study sites. Based on this, the cumulative evaporation in 365 days for sites under controlled situation was 37.63% higher from that of sites under watershed management practices. Besides to this, sites under watershed management were better in water availability having respective 4.6 % and 12.5% higher surface and bottom flux than the sites under controlled environment. In terms of modeling efficiency, the model predicted results for all of the 8 sites in a very good precision, with R2 values 0.73 to 0.853 and RMSE values ranging from 0.015 to 0.04. Simulated results were calibrated with inverse solutions of Hydrus 1D model. Daily in situ measured soil water content data in different layers of 400mm soil profile was applied for calibration. Therefore, the study concluded watershed management practices have positive implications in improving water availability parameters in Aba Gerima and suggested, every watershed should be treated according to appropriate management type based on detail study.
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Hydrus 1D, Water availability, Bottom flux, surface flux, Inverse solution.