Godfrey, S.; Hailemichael, G.; Serele, C. Deep Groundwater as an Alternative Source of Water in the Ogaden Jesoma Sandstone Aquifers of Somali Region, Ethiopia. Water2019, 11, 1735.
Godfrey, S.; Hailemichael, G.; Serele, C. Deep Groundwater as an Alternative Source of Water in the Ogaden Jesoma Sandstone Aquifers of Somali Region, Ethiopia. Water 2019, 11, 1735.
Godfrey, S.; Hailemichael, G.; Serele, C. Deep Groundwater as an Alternative Source of Water in the Ogaden Jesoma Sandstone Aquifers of Somali Region, Ethiopia. Water2019, 11, 1735.
Godfrey, S.; Hailemichael, G.; Serele, C. Deep Groundwater as an Alternative Source of Water in the Ogaden Jesoma Sandstone Aquifers of Somali Region, Ethiopia. Water 2019, 11, 1735.
Abstract
Groundwater is the most extracted raw material in the world with global annual withdrawal rates of 800–1500 km3/year. In East and Southern Africa, 70 % of the population are reliant on shallow groundwater as their primary drinking water source. With increased population growth, intensification of agriculture and industrialization, conflicting demands on groundwater present a challenge to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (6,3,11,12,15). Between 2015 and 2018, the Horn of Africa was affected by a series of climatic induced events, namely El Nino, La Nina and the Indian Ocean Diopole. These events modified the variability of rainfall patterns and resulted in long periods of low rainfall, low recharge and high evapotranspiration. As a result, shallow aquifers in alluvial deposits of Somali region have low yields and produce brackish and saline water. That situation prompted humanitarian water professionals to finance the transportation of water from selected locations with high groundwater potential through water trucks to areas facing groundwater depletion and drought. To address this challenge, UNICEF explored alternative, sustainable deeper groundwater sources that could be extracted using solar water pumping technology for multi water use. This paper describes a three-phase methodology of deep groundwater development of wells in the Ogaden Jesoma sandstone aquifers of the Somali region of the Horn of Africa to a depth of 600 meters below ground level. The results concluded that the deep sandstone aquifer of Jesoma can provide fresh water with yields of 15 l/s to the local population of Somali region. to the study provided insights into deep groundwater identification and development as well as adaptive deep boreholes drilling as a source for climate resilient water supplies.
Keywords
Groundwater; Climate resilience; Deep wells, Deep aquifers, Drought, Somali, Ethiopia
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Geology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
