African Journal of
Agricultural Research

  • Abbreviation: Afr. J. Agric. Res.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1991-637X
  • DOI: 10.5897/AJAR
  • Start Year: 2006
  • Published Articles: 6915

Article in Press

GIS and Remote Sensing Based Assessment and Estimation of Rainwater Harvesting for Crop Production in Daro-Labu District, Oromia, Ethiopia

Bayisa Muleta

  •  Received: 16 August 2024
  •  Accepted: 06 December 2024
Water harvesting is the process of intercepting, conveying, and storing rainfall for future use in drought prone area of eastern Ethiopia. The objective is to assess and estimating the annual volume of water harvesting for crop production. GIS and remote sensing is the recent technology of spatiotemporal data used to assess the factor of influences for rainfall and runoff depth estimation for identification of potential area of rainwater harvesting for crop production. The influence factors for consideration of the assessment was climate data, soil texture and depth, land use and land cover, and slope difference were used. The annual average rainfall of 20 years was 925.2mm with maximum and minimum of 1134mm and 737.3mm, with average annual runoff depth estimate of 185.3 mm. The volume of water harvested was about 2.89x108m3. In order to change the water harvested for crop production and meet the irrigation requirements of selected crop (tomato, onion, and maize) of 528 mm, 354.3 mm and 558.5 mm were taken respectively. The total cultivated 58.6% and irrigated area was about 63% of the total cultivated for single crop season. Thus, water harvesting can be considered as livelihood income generation and increases with production of the communities as well.

Keywords: ArcGIS, Remote Sensing, Water harvesting, Crop Water Requirement, Daro Lebu