Abstract
Although Ethiopia has abundant land for irrigation, only a fraction of its potential land is being utilized and the economy of the country subjected to a direct impact of climate change. So, assessment of land suitability for irrigation purpose is important to utilize the land resources efficiently and for the sustainable production of crops and food security of the ever increasing people in the country especially the study area. This study was initiated to assess the land resources which is potentially suitable for surface irrigation in Borkena watershed by using Geographic Information System (GIS). To identify the land which is suitable for irrigation purpose, the following factors such as soil type, slope, land use/cover and distance from water supply (sources) were taken into account and classified based on the FAO guideline for land evaluation in to S1, S2, S3 and N suitability classes independently. The final existing and potentially irrigable land was identified by weighting overlay these factors of suitability. The suitability analysis of the parameters indicates that 90.65% of slope, 72.03% of soil depth, 94.73% distance from a water source of the study area, 100% soil drainages and 100% of soil texture were identified in the range of highly suitable (S1) to marginal suitable (S3) for surface irrigation. But, when all the above physical suitable area determination factors were weighted together using weighted overlay in Arc GIS software by restricted other land use/cover for irrigation development without agricultural land indicates only 16.13% highly suitable (S1), 47.12% moderately suitable (S2), 31.58 marginally suitable (S3) and 5.17% non-suitable (N) area for surface irrigation development.
Highlights
Ethiopia is one of the African countries whose economy is largely dependent on agriculture [1]
Since most part of the study area were dominated by imperfect drained soil (Figure 2), the River catchment was characterized by moderately suitable (S2) area for surface irrigation with high percentage ratio (Table 2) and around 8,276.00ha (6.57%) and 33,083 (26.26%) of the River catchment occurring under Poor and high soil drainage respectively, which is suitable for marginal (S3) surface irrigation development
Based on FAO [13] soil textural suitability classification for surface irrigation as shown in Figure 3 and Table 3 the textural class of the River catchment soil ranges from highly suitable (S1) to marginally suitable (S3)
Summary
Ethiopia is one of the African countries whose economy is largely dependent on agriculture [1]. This economy is subjected to a direct impact of climate change. Poor land management coupled with increasing climate extremes is affecting the livelihoods of these communities [2,3,4] For these enhancing public and private investments in irrigation development has been identified as one of the core strategies which aimed to change economic performance from rainfall and enable sustainable growth and development in the country [1, 5,6]. In addition to this by considering the current population growth rate and food insecurity in the country [7,8,9] and [10] indicates that development of irrigation plays an important role in stimulating economic growth and rural development by increasing and stabilizing agricultural production and productivity of the country
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