COMMUNITY PERCEPTION ON IMPACT OF LAND USE PRACTICES ON WATER QUALITY OF STREAMS IN AWASH BASIN, ETHIOPIA

The effects of the land cover change have impact on quality of the watersheds in Ethiopia by changing surface and ground water quality which in turn effecting livelihood of communities directly depending on these watersheds. Present study was aimed at assessing the impacts of land use changes on water quality of the streams in Awash basin. Sampling sites were selected based on existing land use practices and accordingly six sampling sites were selected along Awash basin. A random sampling technique was used to select study sites to assess the perception of the community about impact of land use on quality of the streams. Data was collected from primary sources which includes household survey, field data and GIS analyses. Likert scale was employed to gather information concerning perception of local community on water use and quality, and their participation in catchment management. Catchment land use data was collected after stratification of the sites along the catchment and the location of sites using global positioning system (GPS) model. An integrated GPS receiver was used to plot field coordinates of sampling sites. ArcView or Arc/Info programs were used to access the database, manipulate the data, and produce a product. The standard deviation and coefficient of variations were used in order to know the variation and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was also used to compare the physicochemical parameters among the sites. The geo-spatial analysis revealed that, out of the total 12091 hectares land cover, 8182.20 hectare (67.67%) covered with farm land, 1206.76 hectares (9.98%) covered with forest, 1640.87 hectares (13.57%) covered with grazing land and 1061.21 hectares (8.79%) covered with community land. The farm size analysis of respondents indicated that about 56.8% (75) of respondents owned farm size of 0.5 hectares to 1 hectare, about 41.6% (55) of them owned farm size of 1.5 hectare to 2 hectare whereas only 1.5% (2) of the households owned farm size of greater than 2 hectares. Regarding results on the perception of different activities along Awash River corridor along the streams, about 86% respondents perceived that the livestock grazing on the river corridor is detrimental to the environment, about 82.6% respondents perceived crop production along the river corridor has detrimental effect. Of total 132 respondents, only 48 respondents agreed that overgrazing and livestock access to water bodies have negative effects on water quality. Effect of agriculture-crop land expansion to the river corridor on water quality was assessed and results revealed that 43.20% agreed that these activities have negative effect on water quality. Regarding impact of clearing of forest in riparian corridor for agriculture and firewood on water quality, 98 respondents strongly agreed that this factor has a negative effect on water quality. About 93.9% respondents agreed that climate change has a definite impact on water resources of the area. Perception of the respondents on water quality rating of the study sites revealed 65% rated site 6 as poor water quality and 75% of the respondent’s rated site 5 as poor quality. The correlation between various pollutant parameters among study sites indicated that, phosphates, nitrates and ammonia had no significance differences among study sites whereas dissolved oxygen, BOD had shown a significant difference among study sites.