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

The effects of land cover change in Ethiopia have an impact on the quality of watersheds through affecting surface and ground water quality, which has an impact on the livelihood of communities that are directly reliant on these watersheds. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of land use changes on the water quality of streams in the Awash basin. Sampling sites were chosen based on current land use practises, and six sampling sites were chosen along the Awash basin. To measure the community's impression of the impact of land use on stream quality, a random sample technique was employed to identify study locations. Data was gathered from primary sources such as household surveys, field data, and GIS analysis. The local community's perceptions of water consumption and quality, as well as their participation in catchment management, were gathered using a Likert scale. After stratifying the locations along the watershed and locating them using a global positioning system (GPS) model, data on catchment land use was acquired. The field coordinates of sampling sites were plotted using an integrated GPS receiver. To access the database, change the data, and create a product, ArcView or Arc/Info programmes were used. To determine the variation, the standard deviation and coefficient of variations were utilised, as well as analysis of variance (ANOVA) to compare the physicochemical parameters between the sites. The geo-spatial research found that farm land covered 8182.20 hectares (67.67 percent), forest covered 1206.76 hectares (9.98 percent), grazing land covered 1640.87 hectares (13.57 percent), and communal land covered 1061.21 hectares (8.79 percent) of the total 12091 hectares land cover. According to the farm size research, around 56.8% (75) of respondents owned farms ranging from 0.5 hectares to 1 hectare, 41.6 percent (55) owned farms ranging from 1.5 hectare to 2 hectare, and just 1.5 percent (2) of families owned farms larger than 2 hectares. In terms of the perception of various activities along the Awash River corridor along the streams, approximately 86 percent of respondents believe livestock grazing on the river corridor is harmful to the environment, while approximately 82.6 percent believe crop production along the river corridor is harmful to the environment. Only 48 people out of 132 agreed that overgrazing and livestock access to water bodies have negative consequences for water quality. The impact of agriculture-crop land growth along the river corridor on water quality was analysed, with 43.20 percent agreeing that these activities have a detrimental impact. In terms of the influence of forest clearing in riparian corridors for agriculture and firewood on water quality, 98 respondents strongly agreed that this issue had a negative impact. Climate change has a significant impact on the area's water resources, according to 93.9 percent of respondents. Respondents' perceptions of the study sites' water quality found that 65 percent evaluated site 6 as having bad water quality and 75 percent rated site 5 as having poor water quality. The association between several pollutant indicators among study sites revealed that phosphates, nitrates, and ammonia showed no significant differences among study sites, whereas dissolved oxygen, or BOD, did.

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