Abstract
Ethiopia is endowed with huge water potential but uneven distribution in rainfall, increasing demand, and recurrence of droughts have resulted in water scarcity in many parts of the country. The literature lacks spatial water resources assessment at a national scale, covering all the river basins. Large uncertainty in water resource potential is also reported in the literature. The present study utilizes the physics-based, semi-distributed Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model to estimate the hydrological fluxes at national and river basin scales for the entire country of Ethiopia. The model is set up at a grid cell size of 0.05° × 0.05°, and hydrological simulation is carried out for a period spanning 16 years (1998–2013) at a daily time-step. As the model works on each grid cell independently, a geospatial data-driven approach is used for generating the model inputs, performing analysis, and presenting the outputs. The average annual runoff-depth for Ethiopia is estimated as 177 mm, while the average annual evapotranspiration and baseflow are estimated as 737 mm and 27 mm, respectively. Substantial variability in the spatial and temporal distribution of these hydrological fluxes is observed across the country. The runoff coefficient varies from 0.282 (Denakil river basin) to 0.037 (Ogaden river basin), with the country average being ~ 19%. While the spatial pattern of simulated annual runoff is as expected but modeled estimate (present study) is significantly higher than the existing national estimate. The present study underscores the advantage of the geospatial data-driven distributed hydrological modeling approach in assessing the water resource potential in a data-scarce country like Ethiopia. The results will be useful for sustainable development and management of water resources.
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Data and Code Availability
Some of the data used during the study are available in a repository or online in accordance with funder data retention policies: SRTM DEM version 4 (http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/SELECTION/inputCoord.asp). FAO world soil map (Soil map: http://www.fao.org/nr/land/soils/digital-soil-map-of-the-world/en/; Soil database: http://webarchive.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/External-World-soil-database/HTML/HWSD_Data.html?sb = 4). MODIS data-derived MCD12Q1 Land cover maps (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/). Vegetation Parmeters (NASA’s Global Land Data Assimilation System—http://ldas.gsfc.nasa.gov/gldas/). A code that support the findings of this study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request: VIC tool. Some of the data used during the study are proprietary or confidential in nature and may only be obtained with restrictions from the respective organizations: Meteorological Data (National Meteorological Services Agency of Ethiopia); Observed discharge data (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Electricity)
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Acknowledgements
The first author thanks the Government of India, Ministry of Science and Technology, for granting the CV Raman fellowship that enabled him to carry out this work; the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS), ISRO, Dehradun for providing facilities and support to carry out the work; and Ambo University for its support. Thanks to the Government of Ethiopia, Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, and Ethiopian National Meteorological Services Agency for providing the necessary data. We are grateful to Director, IIRS for his support and encouragement while carrying out this work. They also extend their thanks to Dr. Bhaskar R. Nikam, Scientist, IIRS, Dehradun for his support to this work.
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Woldegebriel, T., Garg, V., Gupta, P.K. et al. Ethiopia’s Water Resources: An Assessment Based on Geospatial Data-Driven Distributed Hydrological Modeling Approach. J Indian Soc Remote Sens 50, 1031–1049 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-022-01511-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-022-01511-0