Abstract
Sustainable water resources management should guarantee that also future generations can fulfil their needs and that also natural systems still receive enough water. As we face multiple uses and stakeholders such as agriculture and food production, space for settlements and water supply, tourism, and nature conservation we need integrated modeling approaches to assess the complex impact of human activities on the water cycle. Additional pressures on water resources result from population growth and climate change. Ethiopia is a source region of the Nile River and famous for its water resources potential. The available annual average water per person per year is estimated to be 1575 m3. The Lake Tana accounts for 50% of the national fresh water. It has a total catchment area of about 15,321 km2 and hosts more than three million people. The climate is characterized by a high seasonality of rainfall with a rainy season between June and September. However, the scientific understanding of the hydrologic response to intensive agriculture, the interconnection of groundwater and surface water, and future perspectives of the water availability under global change is limited. Therefore, the main aim is to improve our understanding of past, present, and future hydrologic conditions in the Lake Tana Basin. To this end, hydrological modeling using SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tools) and a coupled surface water and groundwater model (SWAT-MODFLOW) were applied. Results from the models revealed a high connectivity of groundwater and surface water systems. Agricultural crops influence the hydrologic components differently. Groundwater recharge was relatively high on agricultural land covered by cereal crops, whereas surface runoff was significantly enhanced on cultivated land covered by legume crops like peas.
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Change history
04 January 2023
In the original version of the book, the first author’s first name was inadvertently published with a typo. The name has now been corrected from “Tibebe T. Tigabu” to “Tibebe B. Tigabu” in the chapter “Sustainable Water Resources in Rural Areas: Impact of Land Use and Climate Change on Surface Water Groundwater Interactions at Lake Tana, Ethiopia” updated version.
The chapter and book have been updated with the changes.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge funding for a doctoral study grant from the Federal State of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, through the Landesgraduiertenstipendium of Kiel University. We are also thankful to Amahra Design and Supervision Works Enterprise (ADSWE), the Ministry of Water, Irrigation, and Electricity and the National Meteorological Service Agency of the Government of Ethiopia for their support by providing land use/cover, soil, hydrological and climate data.
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Tigabu, T.B., Wagner, P.D., Hörmann, G., Fohrer, N. (2022). Sustainable Water Resources in Rural Areas: Impact of Land Use and Climate Change on Surface Water Groundwater Interactions at Lake Tana, Ethiopia. In: Yadav, B., Mohanty, M.P., Pandey, A., Singh, V.P., Singh, R.D. (eds) Sustainability of Water Resources. Water Science and Technology Library, vol 116. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13467-8_24
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