Abstract
AbstractThis investigation attempts to understand the eco‐hydrology of, and accordingly suggest an option to manage floodwater for agriculture in, the understudied and data‐sparse ephemeral Baraka River Basin within the hyper‐arid region of Sudan. Reference is made to the major feature of the basin, that is, the Toker Delta spate irrigation scheme. A point‐to‐pixel comparison of gridded and ground‐based data sets is performed to enhance the estimates of rainfall. Analysis of remotely sensed land use/cover data is performed. The results show a significant reduction of the grassland and barren areas explained by a significant expansion of the cropland and open shrubland (invasive mesquite trees) areas in the delta. The cotton sown area is highly dependent on the flooded area and the discharge volume in the delta. However, the area of this major crop has declined since the early 1990s in favour of cultivation of more profitable food crops. Expansion of mesquite in the delta is problematic, taking hold under increased floodwater, and can only be manged by clearance to provide crop cultivation area. There is a great potential for floodwater harvesting during the rainfall season (June to September). A total seasonal runoff volume of around 4.6 and 10.8 billion cubic metres is estimated at 90 and 50% probabilities of exceedance (reliabilities), respectively. Rather than leaving the runoff generated from rainfall events to pass to the Red Sea or be consumed by mesquite trees, a location for runoff harvesting structure in a highly suitable area is proposed. Such a structure will support any policy shifts towards planning and managing the basin water resources for use in irrigating the agricultural scheme.
Highlights
Some old and some relatively new options for African river basin management do exist, they are not without constraints
Reflecting on African river basins, it is clear from the above background that the prospects for ultimate success of development planning and management are constrained by the harsh environment, limitations of funding, lack of specialized labor, institutional difficulties, and technological problems (Mather, 1989)
All the generated thematic layers were overlaid based on their normalized weights from the pairwise comparison (Table S3) using the Weight Linear Combination (WLC) method, and with the aid of Equation (7), a final floodwater harvesting (FWH) suitability map was created with four classes of potential water harvesting suitability within the Effective Distance (ED) in the Sudanese part of the study area
Summary
Some old and some relatively new options for African river basin management do exist, they are not without constraints. Reflecting on African river basins, it is clear from the above background that the prospects for ultimate success of development planning and management are constrained by the harsh environment, limitations of funding, lack of specialized labor, institutional difficulties, and technological problems (Mather, 1989) These constraints create problems of poor database and inadequacy of monitoring which make planning and management often being based on false assumptions (Barrow, 1998). Ensuring proper planning and development of the irrigation infrastructure and water distribution on the floodplain is hindered by a serious lack of meteorological and hydrological information Another constraint is the lack of effective overall management, including inadequate flood embankment capacity and bunds along the course of the river, inadequate control of mesquite trees, insufficient design and implementation capacity of the TDAS, and exacerbation of drawdown of groundwater wells by increasing pump irrigation.
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