Groundwater potential identification in Temcha catchment, Upper Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia

Groundwater is an important source of freshwater around the globe and Ethiopia. Despite there is a huge demand for groundwater development for various purposes, there is a dearth of understanding about groundwater potential, occurrence, and distribution in Temcha catchment, Ethiopia. The purpose of this study was to identify the groundwater potential zones of the Temcha catchment using remote sensing, Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) and GIS techniques. The study considered various factors such as lithology, slope, geomorphology, soil, lineament density, rainfall, drainage density, and land use and land cover. The Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) was used to assign relative weights to these factors, and the GIS overlay analysis tool was utilized to determine groundwater potential zones (GWPZs). The findings indicated that the Temcha catchment has a very good potential for groundwater development. Accordingly, only 1.21% of the catchment area is falling under very poor groundwater potential zone; 19.16% in poor; 39.97% in moderate; 28.40% in good and 11.27% in very good groundwater potential zones. The groundwater inventory data for validation purposes also showed the presence of a large potential of groundwater resource for various development works in the area. The validation showed that 73.3% of the time the GWPZ map and the borehole inventory data matched well. Well drillers, water managers, future researchers, farmers and other decision-makers dealing with water resources development, use and management may find this paper useful.