Watershed Hydrological Responses to Changes in Land Use and Land Cover, and Management

This study investigates hydrological responses to changes in land use, land cover and management practices at Hare River watershed, Southern Rift Valley Lakes Basin, Ethiopia. It addresses methods that are required to better characterize impacts of land use and cover and climate change scenarios and understand the upstream-downstream linkages with respect to irrigation water allocation. Understanding how the changes in land use and cover influence streamflow and subsequently optimization of available water resources utilization can enhance the ability of planners, practitioners, researchers and farmers to formulate and implement sound policies to minimize undesirable future impacts and devise management alternatives. Three land use and cover maps were developed using aerial photographs and satellite image through visual interpretation of the aerial photographs and supervised classification of the satellite image. The rates of land use and land cover changes were identified for two periods at watershed and sub-watershed levels. Two physical-based, semi-distributed hydrological models, SWAT2005/ArcSWAT and HSPF, were utilized to simulate hydrological responses to land use and climatic changes. Streamflow data at the outlet of the watershed was utilize