Impact of Land Use/Land Cover Change on Hydrology of the Catchment: The Case of Upper Ribb Catchment, Lake Tana Sub Basin, Ethiopia

Abstract

Land use/land cover dynamics has been recognized as one of the factors responsible for altering the hydrologic response of watersheds. Various extent of water resources projects planning and implementation will require knowledge of these changes on catchment hydrology. This study assesses the impact of land use and land cover change effects on stream flow using SWAT model in Upper Ribb Catchment. The analysis of stream flow was done for three different years of 1973, 1995 and 2016 using SWAT model. During the study period of over 43 years (1973 – 2016) stream flow was increased to 6.143m³/s due to an increase of cultivated land by 29.947%. Model calibration and validation for stream flow were done at Upper Ribb gauging station. The performance of the model was also checked at this station. Both the monthly calibration and validation results showed good match between measured and simulated stream flow data with the coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.85, Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 0.824 for the calibration, and R² of 0.829 and NSE of 0.814 of the validation period.

Keywords: Upper Ribb, Catchment, SWAT, stream flow.

DOI: 10.7176/JEES/9-6-02

Publication date:June 30^th 2019