Changes in land use land cover within the Jukskei River basin and its implications on the water availability

Abstract

South Africa is just slowly emerging from its past turbulent history with some of its population still not able to access some of the basic services such as water. This study was aimed at evaluating changes in land use land cover within the Jukskei River basin and its implications on the water availability. The study used Archydro tools on ArcMap of the ArcGIS program to delineate the Jukskei River catchment, then, used the delineated catchment to clip off the land use land cover (LULC) maps for the periods 1990, 2014 and 2020. The total area of the catchment was determined to be 800 km2, and land use practices were assessed for 1990, 2014 and 2020 LULC maps. The major land use classifications found within the catchment were agriculture, bare-land, forests, grassland, settlements (built-up area), mines, waterbodies, and wetlands. The study showed that settlements accounted for the greatest portion of the Jukskei River catchment, compared to other land use categories. The runoff was determined for the 2, 5, 10 and 20 years return periods. The study showed that runoff increased by 8.33% due to 2020 land uses (70% imperviousness), from those values calculated for 1990 and 2014 land uses which had 60.87 and 61.58% imperviousness respectively. Therefore, the results revealed that a large quantity of water (runoff) is generated in the catchment and then surrendered into the Limpopo River and eventually wasted into the Indian Ocean. The study also showed that an increase in imperviousness due to land use practices resulted in an increase in surface runoff, thus having negative implications on the catchment’s water availability.