Effect of Land Use/Cover and Dam on River Morphological Change in Este District, Gomit River, Amhara, Ethiopia

Abstract

Recently, the construction of dams has affected the morphological process of the downstream river reach by storing water and sediment, changing the water discharge regime of the river and releasing relatively clear water to the downstream. Due to this, GIS and RS software have been used to identify land use and land cover changes, as well as the dam impact of the downstream of the river. The objective of this research is to determine the effect of land use, land cover change, and dams on river morphological change in the Gomit River. The methodology of the study was used four significant parameters (land sat imaginary, slope, soil, and river cross-section) to determine the river morphological change of the study area. Land use/cover changes have been recognized as percent (%), which are forest and grass land, have been decreased by 3 and 27% respectively. Whereas the caltivation land and settlement area were become increasing 26 and 3.4% respectively, While the degrading and aggradation values have been obtained 0.612m, 0.566 and 0.345m from the respective years of 2002, 2016 and 2020 respectively. The sinuosity index values of the years were obtained (2002, 2016 and 2020) is 1.374, 1.30 and 1.294 respectively. As the result the narrowed and widened values are 79.99 and 20.01% respectively.