Abstract:
Groundwater is a hidden natural resource which plays a crucial role in all the environmental and
biological processes with a greater significance on socio-economic activities. A case study with an
aerial extent of 523.1 km2 was carried out to determine the groundwater potential zones in the
Burje watershed, Abay basin, Ethiopia. A total of seven thematic layers including geology,
lineament density, slope, soil, Land use/Land cover, rainfall, and drainage density were used to
map the groundwater potential zones of Burje catchment. The methods to assess the identification
of groundwater potential zone mapping was using weight overlay analysis and Analytical
Hierarchy Process (AHP) algorithm. Finally, groundwater potential zones are classified into three
categories namely low, moderate, and high zone. It is observed that 32.7% (171.05 km2
) of the study
area falls under ‘low’ groundwater potential zone. Approximately 155.94 km2
area accounting for
29.8% of the study area falls under ‘moderate’ category and ‘high’ groundwater potential zone
encompasses an area of 196.11 km2 accounting for 37.5 % of the total study area. The geographical
information system method output results were validated by conducting field survey by randomly
selecting wells in different places using Geographical positioning System (GPS) instruments. About
27 bore wells yield data had been collected to quantify the yield from groundwater potential zone
map derived from geo-informatics. The produced result was verified by comparing with the existing
groundwater borehole databases and the results show that there is good agreement between the
predicted groundwater potential map and the existing groundwater borehole database. From the 7
wells 4 falls on high zone (57.14%). Out of 11 wells yields data ,7 wells (63.63%) of them were
fallen on the moderate zone whereas out of the 9 wells yield data ,7 wells and springs data (77.77
%) was fallen on the zone classified as low.
