Desta, G and Legesse, G and Ahmed, M I and Muluneh, A and Birhanu, B (2024) Assessing flood risks and exploring opportunities for flood-based farming in the dry lowlands of Ethiopia. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems (TSI), 8. 01-17. ISSN 2571-581X
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Abstract
Food grown in the rainfed system in Ethiopia is frequently insufficient to meet household food needs due to recurrent drought, which causes severe food insecurity. Ethiopia’s drylands have also been hit by an increase in torrential floods. As a result, the ability to adapt to shocks and risks decreases. Despite the opportunity of highland-to-lowland to lowland connectivity, the opportunities for flood-recession farming are poorly understood. This study maps flood recession opportunities incorporating national flood occurrence information, flood images, and SMAP surface soil moisture from Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) images in Omo Gibe basin and Mile sub-basin. The analysis demonstrates that during the past three decades, there have been substantial flood incidents in the country’s eastern, south-eastern, and southern regions. Notably, floods that happened in 1996, 2005, 2006, 2013, and 2018 affected 90, 91, 74, 74, and 69 locations, respectively. In 2020, flooding affected a considerable area (274 locations), which demonstrates the rise in flood hazards. Based on multi-criteria suitability analysis, about 32 million hectares of lowlands are highly suitable (61%) and moderately suitable (39%) for flood-based farming. In the Omo-Gibe and the Mile sub-basin, flood-recession zone mapping using a change detection approach revealed that Omo-Gibe basin has 107,359 ha and 29,550 ha of flood zones suitable for flood recession farming and Mile sub-basin of 8,048 ha and 88 ha, during the major and short rainy seasons, respectively. Our results highlight the extent of flood-prone areas and their suitability for flood farming and provide evidence of alternative strategies for managing flood risks. Consequently, identifying potential flood-prone areas using remote sensing technology aids decision-makers and subject-matter experts in introducing and demonstrating various types of flood-based farming. Further research is recommended to identify and validate appropriate flood farming practices under different biophysical and socio-economic contexts and explore complementary opportunities as well as support informed decision-making on flood risk management and recession flood strategies in the dry lowlands of Ethiopia.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | Global Research Program - Resilient Farm and Food Systems Research Program : East & Southern Africa |
| CRP: | UNSPECIFIED |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | flood occurrence, multi-criteria analysis, landscape segments, recession farming, Ethiopia |
| Subjects: | Others > Rainfed Agriculture Others > Ethiopia |
| Depositing User: | Mr Nagaraju T |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Mar 2024 03:15 |
| Last Modified: | 07 Mar 2024 03:15 |
| URI: | http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/12547 |
| Official URL: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs... |
| Projects: | UNSPECIFIED |
| Funders: | UNSPECIFIED |
| Acknowledgement: | The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was partly financed under the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) supported by Funders contributing to the CGIAR Trust Fund. For details visit https://wle.cgiar.org/donors. We also recognize the support of the EU RESET Plus Innovation Fund funded ELSAT project (Project Number: 11.0363/019) which cover staff time of lead and second authors. |
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