Remote Sensing Based Unravelling of Landcover and Groundwater Scenarios Relationships for the Middle Save Sub Catchment of South Eastern Zimbabwe

David Chikodzi^1,

¹School of Natural Science, Great Zimbabwe University, Masvingo

Cite this paper

David Chikodzi. Remote Sensing Based Unravelling of Landcover and Groundwater Scenarios Relationships for the Middle Save Sub Catchment of South Eastern Zimbabwe. American Journal of Water Resources. 2013; 1(3):45-50. doi: 10.12691/AJWR-1-3-5

Abstract

The impact of landcover/landuse type on the groundwater scenarios has not been investigated extensively in Zimbabwe due to lack of groundwater observation data. The research was aimed at using remote sensing to unravel the groundwater scenarios under different landcover/landuse types in the middle Save catchment of Zimbabwe. The research used the gravity recovery and climate experiment (GRACE) satellite to measure regional groundwater fluctuations from 2004-2010. Landsat satellite images were also used to classify the study area into three landcover/landuse types: grasslands, forests and shrublands. The results showed that grasslands occupy 59% of the land area, forests occupy 22% of the place and shrublands cover19% of the study area. On seasonal groundwater scenarios, areas under forests had the highest magnitude of groundwater recharge (up to 20cm) and also the highest levels of groundwater lose (up to -20cm). Shrublands had recharge levels of up 13cm and loses of about -14cm. Grasslands had the least recharge of about 6cm at peak and the lowest magnitude of groundwater loses of about -7cm. The research also showed that from 2004- 2010 groundwater levels have been in a state of decline in the study area. The research concluded that landcover/landuse affects only seasonal not year on groundwater fluctuations. Geographical information systems and remote sensing were shown to be capable of producing groundwater scenarios of the study area in the absence of systematic ground based groundwater observations.

Keywords

Grace satellite, remote sensing, middle Save, groundwater scenarios

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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