A GIS-Based Multi-Criteria Land Suitability Analysis for Surface Irrigation along the Erer Watershed, Eastern Hararghe Zone, Ethiopia
Downloads
The high dependency on rain-fed and the incessant erratic rainfall during the main growing seasons in Ethiopia pose a huge threat to agricultural production and productivity. Multi-criteria irrigation land suitability analysis and mapping can play an important role not only in sustainable use of scarce resources, but also in overcoming the global problem of water scarcity and crop production caused due to the high degree of rainfall variability and unreliability. The objective of this study was to determine suitable sites for surface irrigation along the Erer Watershed of East Hararghe Zone, Ethiopia. The study employed GIS-based multi criteria land suitability evaluation method considering fifteen factors , namely, soil pH, soil type, soil drainage, soil depth, AWSC, impermeable layer, ECE, CEC, phase, organic carbon, texture classes, obstacle to root, land use /land cover, slope, and distance from the river outlets to find suitable land for surface irrigation. Each factor was standardized to a common measurement scale so that the results represent numeric range giving higher values to more suitable and lower values to less suitable attributes. Using the Weighted Overlay tool, the values of each dataset were weighted and combined to find the most suitable location for irrigation using the ArcGIS environment. The results of the study revealed that about 386,731ha (11.7% of the watershed area) is highly suitable while 140,308 ha (36.3% of the watershed area) is not suitable for surface irrigation. The remaining suitability classes placed within the marginally and moderately suitable categories were about 151,120 ha (39.07%) and 50,223 ha (12.98%) of the watershed area, respectively. The findings drawn from this study can play an indispensable role in boosting irrigable land and crop production in the study area by considering suitable irrigable lands in terms of the fifteen factors described.
Copyright (c) 2019 Kassaye Hussien, Gezahagn Woldu, Shimelis Birhanu
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- I am authorized by my co-authors to enter into these arrangements.
- I warrant, on behalf of myself and my co-authors, that:
- the article is original, has not been formally published in any other peer-reviewed journal, is not under consideration by any other journal and does not infringe any existing copyright or any other third party rights;
- I am/we are the sole author(s) of the article and have full authority to enter into this agreement and in granting rights to Springer are not in breach of any other obligation;
- the article contains nothing that is unlawful, libellous, or which would, if published, constitute a breach of contract or of confidence or of commitment given to secrecy;
- I/we have taken due care to ensure the integrity of the article. To my/our - and currently accepted scientific - knowledge all statements contained in it purporting to be facts are true and any formula or instruction contained in the article will not, if followed accurately, cause any injury, illness or damage to the user.
- I, and all co-authors, agree that the article, if editorially accepted for publication, shall be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0. If the law requires that the article be published in the public domain, I/we will notify Springer at the time of submission, and in such cases the article shall be released under the Creative Commons 1.0 Public Domain Dedication waiver. For the avoidance of doubt it is stated that sections 1 and 2 of this license agreement shall apply and prevail regardless of whether the article is published under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 or the Creative Commons 1.0 Public Domain Dedication waiver.
- I, and all co-authors, agree that, if the article is editorially accepted for publication in Haramaya Journals, data included in the article shall be made available under the Creative Commons 1.0 Public Domain Dedication waiver, unless otherwise stated. For the avoidance of doubt it is stated that sections 1, 2, and 3 of this license agreement shall apply and prevail.
