Delineation of Ground Water Prospect Zones of Mojo Watershed, Ethiopia, East Africa, Using GIS, Remote Sensing and Analytical Hierarchy Process

Abstract

One of the most important elements in the development of human civilization is the prospect and availability of groundwater. Ethiopian farmers depend upon the rainy season for farming practices. The natural and man-made factors create extreme poverty and suffering for the farming communities and the country at large. Ethiopia's potential for its groundwater is not fully understood. Also, a high-resolution groundwater prospect mapping availability is restricted to only a few localities of the Ethiopian Rift Valley. Therefore, this research was conducted to demonstrate how well remote sensing and GIS tech niques combined with weight assignment utilizing an analytical hierarchy process can be used to decipher groundwater prospects with the least amount of resources and the highest degree of accuracy. The priority of geology/lithology, slope, lineament, density, geomorphology, drainage density, soil, land cover, and rainfall is established in the Ethiopian Main Rift Valley through the validation process by borewell locations and their safe yields, which also reveals the sustainability of groundwater resources. The findings show 91.53% of agreement and 8.47% of disagreement during the validation of the study. Additionally, this analysis shows that close to 59% of the Mojo watershed is classified as having good to very good groundwater prospects, while approximately 31% of the area is classified as a moderate groundwater potential index. And the remaining 8.31%, of the area comes under the poor to very poor groundwater potential index.