dc.description.abstract |
Assessment of land suitability for irrigation has an imperative role for sustainable
utilization of scarce physical land resources and ensuring the sustainable production of
crops. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to assess surface irrigation potential
and develop surface irrigation suitability map for Gimbara Catchment by using a multi-criteria Decision-making technique with Geographical Information System (GIS).
Attributes of parameters were collected and used for analysis, such as water resource,
topography, land use land cover, stream drainage, lineament, Geology, and soil. Three
crops were selected, their water demand was computed by CropWat8 software and the
demand was compared with the available minimum river flow. The suitability criteria
were adopted from FAO (1976) criteria for irrigation. Based on the criteria employed,
we found 13 %( 977.06ha) of land was highly suitable (S1), 45.5 %( 3390ha) was
moderately suitable (S2) and 41.35% (3078.56ha) was marginally suitable (S3) for
surface irrigation. Above 76% of the land was highly potential to moderately potential
for groundwater occurrence. The gross irrigation requirement of the selected crop
(Maize, Teff & Barley) was 1776mm. Only 3.03% of the land can be irrigated with
the selected crops using a minimum available stream-flow of 1.02m
3
/s. The total water
storage requirement for satisfying the whole area of land was 33.65 m
3
/s. Therefore, an
extra 32.63m
3
/s of water must be stored for optimum production of the crop. Overall,
our study will help planners to improve identification of sustainable irrigation areas in
the region to address the perpetual shortage of food in the region.
Key words: Irrigation potential, GIS, Land suitability, weighted overlay |
en_US |