Over the past five decades, gullying has been widespread and has become more severe in the Ethiopian highlands. Only in very few cases, rehabilitation of gullies has been successful in Ethiopia due to the high costs. The objective of this paper is to introduce cost effective measures to arrest gully formation. The research was conducted in the Debre-Mewi watershed located at 30 km south of Bahir Dar, Ethiopia.

Agricultural productivity in Ethiopian highlands is constrained mainly by high climate variability. Although use of soil and water conservation technologies is recognized as a key strategy to improve agricultural productivity, adoption of technologies has been very low as farmers consider a variety of factors in their adoption decision. This study assesses the adoption pattern of interrelated rainwater management technologies and investigates factors that influence farm household adoption and scaling-up of rainwater management technologies and draws recommendations for policy.

Poor rainwater management (RWM) practices and resultant problems of land degradation and low water productivity are severe problems in the rural highlands of Ethiopia. The current study was undertaken at Meja watershed, which is located in the Jeldu district of Oromia region. The study investigated rainwater management practices and associated socio-economic and biophysical conditions in the watershed. The existing RWM interventions, their extent and the nature of changes in land use and land cover (LULC) conditions were mapped and evaluated.

Most soil erosion studies conducted in Ethiopia are focused on quantification of sediment and lack specific information on temporal and spatial variability of sediment and its associated plant nutrients loss. This study was, therefore quantified and characterized runoff and sediment along with estimated the on-site financial cost of erosion in terms of its concomitant crop yield loss due to the nitrogen and phosphorus lost in consequence of erosion.

The irrigation system in Kobo-Girrana valley is extensively developed into modern drip irrigation using ground water sources. Tomato and onion are among the major vegetables grown under drip irrigation. However, the drip lateral spacing is fixed to 1m for all irrigated crops. This lead to low crop water productivity, loss of land, less net return income and un-optimized irrigation production. An on-station experiment was conducted to determine the effect of drip line spacing and irrigation regime on yield, irrigation water use efficiency and net return income.

Inefficient management and use of water is unanimously the most single constraint of agricultural production of Ethiopia. The study was conducted to assess the effect of livestock feed sourcing and feeding strategies on livestock water productivity (LWP) in mixed crop–livestock production systems of the Blue Nile Basin in Ethiopian Highlands. Three districts representing diverse agricultural farming systems were considered. Each district further stratified to different farming systems. Multi-stage stratified random sampling technique was employed to select farm households.

Waterlogged Vertisols are amongst the high potential soils where management interventions could result in positive impacts. This study utilized soil, climate and crop and livestock productivity data and models to demonstrate intensification strategies which increase crop–livestock system productivity and to understand the effects of alternative land use and water management options on water productivity in the Vertisols areas.

The main objective of this research was to study soil erosion and sediment yield in Mizewa watershed using SWAT model. The study was involved hydrological and erosion modelling using primary data collected in the watershed. Hydrological and meteorological data were collected from the stations installed in the watershed by IWMI in collaboration with Ministry of Water and Energy and National Meteorological Service Agency. Suspended sediment data was collected at Mizewa River in the watershed, used for sediment rating curve development.

With the construction of the new Renaissance Dam at the Ethiopian Sudan border, reducing sediment load in the Blue Nile is becoming increasingly important. Past attempts of decreasing sediment concentrations have been only partially successful. In this paper, we will examine the temporal distribution of sediment generation within small watersheds and systematically compare this with the observed sediment concentration at various watershed scales using the Parameter Efficient Distributed (PED) model.

Koga irrigation scheme was developed to irrigate about 7004 ha. Furrow irrigation is the recommended method for the distribution of water. However, furrow irrigation has inherent inefficiencies due to deep percolation on the upper end and runoff at the lower end of the furrow. These losses depend on furrow length, furrow gradient, surface roughness, stream size and cutoff time. These factors play significant role to influence the advance time of irrigation and the operation rule of the scheme. This paper examines the advance time of furrow irrigation at Koga.

Access to safe drinking water services in the Ethiopian Highlands is one of lowest worldwide due to failure of water supply services shortly after construction. Over hundred water supply systems were surveyed to find the underlying causes of failure and poor performance throughout the Amhara Regional State. The results show generally that systems with decision-making power at the community level during design and construction remained working longer than when the decisions were made by a central authority.

Sustaining upland agriculture and food security is very much constrained by continuing land degradation brought by soil erosion due to lack of effective rainwater management strategies. Recently a large body of research evidence has established that significant potential exists to increase agricultural productivity through sustainable rainwater management interventions. Hydrological models are essential to understand the hydrological response of a catchment. The current paper focuses on hydrological modelling of catchment with SWAT model using its two versions, SWAT-CN and SWAT-WB.