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Water resources development and management are central to economic growth and poverty reduction. Despite considerable efforts, many households still rely on unimproved water sources. This research aimed to understand the reasons behind household reluctance to collect potable water from improved sources in urban and rural settings. Sixteen water points were selected purposively and a household survey conducted on the selected improved water source users. The result shows that in the urban areas people were satisfied with the water services provided. However, the poor could not afford the high cost of water and households sought unprotected alternative sources. Seventy-seven per cent of the urban and 65% of the rural households collect water from unimproved sources. Family size was the determinant factor for household water consumption from improved sources. Reliability, queuing time, high quality, and distance were associated with households' reluctance to collect potable water from improved sources. In conclusion, households' dependency on unprotected sources had a direct impact on the sustainability of schemes. Social factors are also fundamental when thinking about the sustainability of schemes. HIGHLIGHTS Explains the existing water use trend of households that represent the majority of people in Africa.; Indicated the significance of social factors that are not considered by decision makers and water infrastructure planners.; People are traveling to search unprotected sources that indicated water is a matter of survival or death than in need.; Improved sources to save life and productive time of women and children.

Check dams are business as usual practices used to avert gully erosion development and sedimentation in the downstream areas of the humid highlands of Ethiopia. We investigated the status of check dams and their relationship with geotechnical soil properties in the sub-humid Fogera floodplain. The density of gullies in the area was more sever having about 3.6 km km-2 which shows the severity of gully erosion. Thirty-two dams constructed and monitored over one rainy season. In the beginning of the rainy season, all the dams filled up with sediments, and at the end of the monitoring period ninety five percent of them had destroyed and the remainings had partially destroyed and had sediments accumulated on one side of the gully bank. The longitudinal gradient of streams above the dams decreased due to sedimentation. The morphological change of the gully showed an increase in width-depth ratio, gully bank erosion, and sediment aggradation in the gully bed. We found that the amount of sediments deposited behind the dams were higher than the amount of eroded material. The higher clay content and Atterberg limits increased soil erodibility once the gully channel formed. The erodibility and saturation in these soils were highly contributing to gully development and reducing the effectiveness of check dams. In conclusion, it is better to adopt an integrated novel practice to control gullying than solely using check dams.

Effective watershed planning requires an understanding of the hydrology. In the humid tropical monsoon climates and especially in volcanic highland regions such as the Ethiopian Highlands, the understanding of watershed processes is incomplete. The objective is to better understand the hydrology of the volcanic regions in the humid highlands by linking the hillslope processes with the discharge at the outlet. The Ene-Chilala watershed was selected for this study. The infiltration rate, piezometric water levels and discharge from two nested sub watersheds and at the watershed outlet were measured during a four-year period. Infiltration rates on the hillsides exceeded the rainfall intensity most of the time. The excess rain recharged a perched hillside aquifer. Water flowed through the perched aquifer as interflow to rivers and outlet. In addition, saturation excess overland flow was generated in the valley bottoms. Perched water tables heights were predicted by summing up the recharge over the travel time from the watershed divide. Travel times ranged from a few days for piezometers close to the divide to 40 days near the outlet. River discharge was simulated by adding the interflow from the upland to overland flow from the saturated valley bottom lands. Overland flow accounted only for one-fourth of the total flow. There was good agreement between predicted and observed discharge during the rain phase therefore the hillslope hydrologically processes were successfully linked with the discharge at the outlet.

Natural resources degradation impacts sustainable agricultural productivity and the lives of the smallholder farmers. A government-led large-scale watershed management program has been started to curb the degraded areas. The long-term viability of interventions has remained a major challenge. We aim to understand the challenges and approaches of community-based interventions on sustainable natural resource management. Sub-watersheds were identified for a detail study based on erosion hotspots using the SWAT model. A cross-sectional research design was used to get relevant data through focus group discussion, field observation, and desk-level review. Each of the selected sub-watersheds followed a government-sponsored campaign to conserve degraded areas. The effectiveness of implemented conservation efforts was marginal. As a result, the community kept on reluctant to participate in conservation programs even on their farm fields. Despite farmers often hope to saw immediate returns, the long-term benefits of watershed development continued challenging. In conclusion, the government-led watershed development programs have not been evaluated by the government and stakeholders, technically supported, lack trust in the community and, hence, efforts remained unsustainable. Adaptive watershed management approach could have the opportunity to reduce the current challenges and to achieve sustainable natural resources management at a watershed scale.

In the northern highlands of Ethiopia, gully erosion is severe. Despite many efforts to implement gully prevention measures, controlling gully erosion remains a challenge. The objective is to better understand the regional gully erosion processes and to prevent gully head retreat. The study was conducted in the Ene-Chilala catchment in the sub-humid headwaters of the Birr River located southwest of Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. Twelve gully heads were monitored during the 2014 and 2015 rainy monsoon phase. We measured gully head morphology and retreat length, soil shear strength, ground water table levels and catchment physical characteristics. Two active gully head cuts were treated in 2014 and an additional three head cuts in 2015 by regrading their slope to 45 degrees and covering them with stone riprap. These treatments halted the gully head advance. The untreated gullies were actively eroding due to groundwater at shallow depths. The largest head retreat was 22.5 m, of which about half occurred in August of the first year when the surrounding soil was fully saturated. Lowering both the water table and protecting the gully heads can play a key role in reducing gully expansion and soil loss due to gully erosion in the Ethiopian highlands.

Gully erosion reduces agricultural productivity by destroying valuable land resources, increases sediment concentrations, reduces water quality, and fills up reservoirs. Gully rehabilitation has proven to be challenging especially in the high-rainfall areas of the Ethiopian Highlands and has therefore had limited success. This paper describes a successful low-cost gully rehabilitation effort with community participation in the Birr watershed in the Blue Nile basin that begun in early 2013. Initially, farmers were reluctant to participate for religious reasons, but with the aid of local priests and respected elders, community discussions, and a visit to a rehabilitated gully, a consensus was reached to rehabilitate a 0·71-ha upland gully. The rehabilitation measures consisted of regrading the gully head at a 45° slope, constructing low-cost check dams from locally available materials, and planting Pennisetum purpureum grass and Sesbania sesban. At the end of the first post-implementation rainy season, 2,200 tons of soil was conserved by the constructed check dams and newly planted vegetation, compared with soil losses of 680 and 560 tons in two untreated, nearby gullies. In 2014, an additional 3,100 tons of soil was conserved. In 2013, the marginal rate of return (MRR) on the gully rehabilitation investment was 2·6 based on the value of increased forage production alone. When we include trapped soil nutrient values, the rehabilitation MRR was increased to 10. Although these numbers are impressive, the best proof of the success was that farmers on their own initiative rehabilitated an additional five gullies in 2014. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In Ethiopia the population is rapidly expanding. As a consequence the landscape is rapidly changing. Eucalyptus plantations are increasing and irrigation projects are implemented. The hydrological effects of the changing landscape on river (low) flows have not been well documented and therefore the amount of water available in the future might be over optimistic. The objective of this paper is to establish how low flows have been impacted by new developments in irrigation and by landscape change. For this paper, we choose the Gilgel Abay in the headwaters of the upper Blue Nile basin, since it has both good quality discharge data and it is located in the Tana Beles growth corridor. Numerical and statistical means were used to analyze the 25 years of available low flow data. We found a statistically significant decreasing trend (P < 0.00001) of low flow in the Gilgel Abay. From 1980’s to 1990’s the low flow decreased by 25% and from 1990’s to 2000’s the low flow was reduced by 46%. The deterministic analysis with the Parameter Efficient Distributed (PED) model supported the statistical findings and indicated that in the middle of the nineteen nineties, after irrigation projects and eucalyptus plantations increased greatly, the low flows decreased more rapidly.

Rehabilitation of large valley bottom gullies in developing countries is hampered by high cost. Stopping head cuts at the time of initiation will prevent large gullies from forming and is affordable. However, research on practices to control shallow gully heads with local materials is limited. The objective of this research was therefore to identify cost-effective shallow gully head stabilization practices. The four-year study was conducted on 14 shallow gullies (