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Reservoir sedimentation evaluation using remote sensing and GIS approaches for the reservoirs in the upper Blue Nile Basin

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Abstract

The present study aimed to evaluate the temporal dynamics of water stored in a reservoir using satellite remote sensing data integrated with a GIS application. The study is carried out in three reservoirs, which include Koga, Shina, and Selamko reservoirs located in the upper Blue Nile Basin. The techniques used to carry out this study have been pre and post-processing of Landsat images, modeling and identifying water pixels, evaluating reservoir capacity, and compression of results with recent bathymetric survey data. The Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) has been also employed to determine open water features and to improve the presence of water pixels in satellite imagery. Percentage Difference Area Index (PDAI) and Normal Difference Area Index (NDAI) techniques have been used to assess the deviation of storage area from satellite remote sensing, topo of bed elevation, and bathymetric survey. Results indicated that the Koga reservoir storage capacity has reduced from 83.10 to 81.179 Mm3, showing an annual storage loss of 0.33% (2009–2016). For Shina and Selamko reservoirs, annual storage loss due to sediment depositions is found to be 2.53% and 2.13% in a span of 9 and 11 years, exceeding the annual average worldwide rate for reservoir sedimentation of 1%. The findings of the study showed that the sedimentation problem was relatively severe as compared with the findings of most other studies of similar reservoirs in other parts of Ethiopia. The area needs some intensive soil and water management strategies for sustainable use of the reservoirs in the Blue Nile Basin. To regain the storage capacity of the reservoirs, it would be proposed to adopt manual and or mechanical dredging with flushing for de-silting the deposited sediments, especially in Shina and Selamko reservoirs.

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Acknowledgements

This study was partially supported by the University of Gondar, where the support was funding for transportation in observed data collection. The authors would like to express their sincere thanks to the Abay basin authority office, and the Ethiopian Road Authority for providing the necessary data and research facilities. Our special thanks go to the farmers in the Koga, Shina, and Selamko who helped us greatly in putting the control points at the shoreline of the reservoirs on the imaging data.

Funding

This research received not much external funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil and Hydraulic Engineering, Institute of Technology, University of Gondar, 196, Gondar City, Ethiopia

    Aniley T. Tesfaye, Dessalew T. Defersha & Abrham B. Wassie

  2. Faculty of Civil and Water Resources Engineering, Bahir Dar Institute of Technology, Bahir Dar University, 26, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

    Mamaru A. Moges & Michael M. Moges

  3. Texas A and M AgriLife Research, Temple, TX, USA

    Abeyou W. Worqlul

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  1. Aniley T. Tesfaye
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  5. Dessalew T. Defersha
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Contributions

All authors conceived and designed the research. Conceptualization: ATT, MAM and MMM; investigation: ATT, and MAM; writing—original draft preparation: ATT; writing—review and editing: MAM, MMM, AWW, DTD, and ABW All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Aniley T. Tesfaye.

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The authors declare that they have no known competition for financial and conflict of interests that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Tesfaye, A.T., Moges, M.A., Moges, M.M. et al. Reservoir sedimentation evaluation using remote sensing and GIS approaches for the reservoirs in the upper Blue Nile Basin. Sustain. Water Resour. Manag. 9, 23 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40899-022-00792-0

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