Impact of Land Use and Land Cover Change on the Groundwater Resource in Niger
Abstract
In the last decades, the south and southwestern regions of semi-arid Niger in West Africa has experienced a significant change in land use/land cover and groundwater resource due to increasing domestic demand with its population growth rate from 2.8% in 1975 to 3.8% in 2012 and expanding irrigation for agricultural production. Insufficiency of surface water in the semi-arid area causes the groundwater to become an essential resource for living in this area. In-situ groundwater depth data have been collected for the regions including Mardi, Zinder, and Diffa from 1975 to 2012. The spatial and temporal change of land use/land cover between 1975 to 2012 shows an expansion in the agricultural area by 26.48%, 13.8%, and 0.22%; also decreasing in Sahelian grass savanna by 25%, 10.69%, and 1.94% in Maradi, Zinder, and Diffa regions, respectively. From 1975 to 2012 the average rate of increase of groundwater depth is around ~ 7.915 mm/year, 3.63 mm/year, and 1.497 mm/year in Maradi, Zinder and Diffa, respectively. The in-situ groundwater depth was also compared according to dry and wet seasons for each region. The analysis of groundwater depth in Maradi during the dry season between 1995-1996 and 2005-2006 shows 12% decrease of groundwater while during the wet season there is no significant change ~2%. The groundwater depth in Zinder during the 1990s and 2000s for the dry and wet season shows an increase of groundwater depth around 9% and 23% respectively. However, Diffa region shows a decrease of 24% in the groundwater table during dry season and 19% increase during the wet season. These variations in groundwater depth rate possibly caused by surrounding farmland irrigation or precipitation rate in these regions.
Keywords: groundwater depth; land use; landcover change; West Africa; semiarid area; Niger; agriculture; irrigation- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.H11B..01S
- Keywords:
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- 0402 Agricultural systems;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1632 Land cover change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1803 Anthropogenic effects;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1836 Hydrological cycles and budgets;
- HYDROLOGY