IDENTIFICATION OF GROUND WATER RECHARGE

AND DISCHARGE ZONES

IN
UPPER ILLALA BASIN
A
GIS -REMOTE SENSING APPROACH

Research Proposal for Hydro science and Engineering

August 2009
General
Groundwater is basically a renewable resource, but the volume of water
actually in storage may vary greatly from place to place depending on
climate, regional hydrogeology and rate of groundwater used for agriculture,
industries and domestic purposes. From a practical stand point groundwater
may not be renewable in terms of a human activities like contamination,
extensive usage of groundwater and elimination of recharge areas.

In modern water resource development and hydrogeological study, GIS and

remote sensing are playing a significant role. Using remote sensing for
hydrological investigations has got many advantages; one of these is its
tendency to generate information in spatial and temporal domain which then
goes to analysis, predication and validation respectively. It also provides
multisensoral, multispectral and multitemporal data. GIS technology is
suitable alternative for providing an efficient management of large and
complex data base.

The Ethiopian water resource is still not well studied and even the areas
which are potentially known did not come into practice. These may be due
to economic problems since water resource development requires large
amount of money and well qualified professionals. Out of 70 million people
living in the country only 34% get clean water which is mostly from surface
water bodies (ministry water resource) but in areas where surface water
resource is scarce or is in a limited amount, groundwater resources can be
used as the best alternative. But, before going to the development stage the
subsurface water potential has to be studied in order to get good information
and to avoid over exploitation of the resource. Identifying recharge and
discharge zones give us basic ideas where there is high potential for
groundwater in order to locate sites for boreholes, wells and for identifying
artificial recharge zones. Despite the fact that the country has been going
through series of drought periods and the population increment is at
alarming rate, still we didn’t give sufficient attention to the resource at hand
which is mainly the result of lack of skilled professionals and budget
constraint.

This study deals with identifying recharge and discharge zones using GIS
and Remote sensing technique focusing on the Tigray region which have
been affected by series of drought seasons. Specifically this study concerns
about an area located about 34km east of Mekelle town covering an area of
142.814 Km2. The area has got a very limited surface water resource and
most of the streams are ephemeral (seasonal).

Identifying the recharge and discharge zones in the area helps to determine
the groundwater potential of the area in order to locate sites for wells,
boreholes and for selection of artificial recharge zones for irrigation purpose.

Objective
The core objective of this study is to identify and map the recharge and
discharge zones using the primary and secondary data on the geology and
hydrology and hydrogeology of the area.

To full fill the above main objectives we have to consider a number of

specific objectives.
The specific objectives are:

- To prepare a detailed geological, land use, soil, Water level map and
hydrogeological maps of the study area.

-To determine the hydraulic gradient and water level of the catchment

-To characterize the rock units in the area with respect to their groundwater
holding and transmitting capacity.

-To identify geological structure such as faults, joints, dikes, solution

cavities etc that may control the groundwater flow pattern in the area.

-To determine groundwater development in the area and the respective

discharge capacity of springs, hand dug well and shallow wells.

-To identify the groundwater flow direction

-To prepare a well documented data on the geology and hydrogeology of

the area.
Thesis Statement

This thesis is planned based on the fact that the people living in the upper
Illala basin are highly affected by clean water shortage which is the result of
lack of pre drilling investigation which resulted many unsuccessful borehole
drillings and wastage of the country’s budget. So, Identifying recharge and
discharge zones using GIS and Remote sensing give us basic ideas where
there is high potential for groundwater in order to locate sites for boreholes,
wells and for identifying artificial recharge zones.

Materials and Methods

The methods planned to be used in this study include literature review, field
investigation and data analysis using different soft wares.
• Topography maps, aerial photographs satellite Images of available
scales are interpreted in the office and checked in the field.
• Available analog data are digitized and analyzed using GIS software.
The geological and hydrogeological data collected from the field are
used for the preparation of the hydrogeological map.
• The drainage map is planned to be prepared from the topo sheet and
satellite data of the study area.

• The entire primary in put maps (topographic, lineament, contour and

drainage) after preparation will be digitized in Arc GIs software.

• The satellite image is planned to be processed and interpreted to

generate land use classification.

• Topographic map and aerial photos of available scale should be

interpreted in the office and checked in the field so as to produce
appropriate geological, land use and hydrogeological maps of the
area.
• Finally Weighted index overly method will be used to classify the
area into different zones using various parameters by giving weights
based on their recharging potential.

Weighted index overlaying

This is a simple and straightforward method for a combined analysis of
multi-class maps. For the precision of this method human decisions
incorporated in the WIOA (weighted index overlaying) method take into
consideration the relative importance of the parameters and the class
belonging to each parameter.

• The map classes will be assigned different scores, and the maps
themselves receive different weights.
• The scores and weights assignment is based on facts that consider
the importance of the different parameters in controlling
groundwater occurrence and movement in the particular area under
consideration (knowledge-based approach). The weighted index
overlay method which will be used to produce our final composite
map has incorporated the Geology, Structural density, Topography,
Land Use, Slope and Soil distribution as the core parameters for the
outcome. These individual parameters will given weight values
according to their importance (degree of influence) in the recharging
process of the particular area.
• Those parameters which have the highest influence or importance
are given highest and those with least control were assigned small
values
• The average score will then be defined by:
 n

∑S W ij i
S= i
n

∑W i
i

Where
► S is the weighted score for the area (polygon, pixel),
► Wi is weight for the i-th input map, and
► S ij is the score for the j-th class of the i-th map, the value of j

depending on the class actually occurring at the current location.

• Based on the values generated using this formula, the groundwater
recharge zone map will be derived.
• The resulting map will be then reclassified in to five classes from
the less recharge to the high recharge zones.

Preliminary Result and Discussion

Implication of the Research

Since ground water is a precious source of a finite extent. Over years,

increasing population, urbanization and expansion in agriculture has lead to
unscientific exploitation of Groundwater stress conditions.

In Ethiopia, water resource is still not well studied and even the areas with
high Groundwater potential are not sufficiently utilized (or even not come to
practice at all).

GIS is very crucial for groundwater studies. In groundwater studies one has
to deal with information comprising of locational data and attribute data, this
could be done easily by the GIS technology
Our study which will deal with identification of recharge and discharge
zones using GIS and remote sensing will have a great role in precisely
locating locate groundwater potential zones which leads to location of bore
holes sites.

And specifically the local people in many villages of the study area are
suffering from lack of water and they have to make a long and tiresome
journey to fetch the water for their daily domestic consumptions. So, this
and other similar researches will contribute allot to the scientific selection
borehole sites which increase the number of effective wells in the area and
distributing them evenly to the local people

Time table
1 Desk work Collection of
references works
done in the area
Collection of datas
,Maps papers done in
the area
Producing
preliminary maps
from satellite images
and aerial
photographs
2 Preliminary field Reconnaissance field
visit survey the study area
in order has visual
understanding of the
 study area.
3 Preparation for Based of the
the main filed information from
work field visit.
4 Main field work Where primary datas
are collected
5 Paper work and Producing maps,
Maps graphs and tables
using the collected
datas.
Writing the body
parts of the thesis.
6 Thesis submission First draft
Second draft
Final
References

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