Watershed degradation and management practices in north-western highland Ethiopia
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Watershed degradation and management practices in north-western highland Ethiopia Desalew Meseret Moges
&
H. Gangadhara Bhat
Received: 3 January 2019 / Accepted: 24 September 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Watershed degradation in Ethiopia has become a major environmental threat and caused significant damages both in the natural environment and the development of human society. This paper assesses an overview of the extent, causes, and effects of watershed degradation and the management actions in north-western highland Ethiopia, taking the Rib watershed as a case study site. The data were collected from field observations, interviews, and questionnaire surveys administered to 210 farmers. The results show that watershed degradation is a serious and widespread problem in the study site. The major causes of watershed degradation include population growth, uncontrolled grazing, unsustainable land use and management practices, and weak land ownership system. Watershed degradation, mainly in the form of soil erosion, has adversely reduced agricultural production and worsened food insecurity and poverty in the study area. Various watershed management practices that combine structural and biological measures have been practiced to curb the problem. However, the farmers’ decisions to adopt and implement the measures have been highly influenced by Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-020-08628-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. D. M. Moges (*) : H. G. Bhat Department of Geoinformatics, Mangalore University, Mangalagangotri 574199, India e-mail: [email protected] H. G. Bhat Department of Marine Geology, Mangalore University, Mangalagangotri 574 199, India
a range of socioeconomic, biophysical, and institutional factors. Access to support services, size of the farmland, educational level, and plot ownership were found to influence farmers’ decisions positively at a statistically significant (P < 0.01) level. It needs efforts to create farmer environmental awareness and develop strong watershed management standards and guidelines. The watershed could benefit from hand in hand efforts of local farmers, concerned governmental agencies, and researchers. Keywords Binary logistic regression . Farmers’ perception . Highland Ethiopia . Watershed degradation . Degradation control measures
Introduction Watersheds are vital components of the terrestrial ecosystem. Healthy watersheds such as freshwater and land resource systems not only provide important ecosystem services to humanity (Knüppe and Meissner 2016) but also maintain the physicochemical and biological processes that occur within the watershed (Jones 2002; Zhihui Li et al. 2015). Watersheds, however, are globally degrading and the services they provide are continually deteriorating, yet demand for these services is increasing (Coxhead and Shively 2005; Darghouth et al. 2008; Gebremeskel et al. 2018; Gebretsadik 2014; Haregeweyn et al. 2012; Men
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