Recharge variability and sensitivity to climate: The example of Gidabo River Basin, Main Ethiopian Rift

• Recharge varies substantially in space and time and is mainly controlled by climate.
• Current state of recharge is at threshold conditions in the rift floor.
• Relative sensitivity of recharge increases from highland toward rift floor.
• Recharge is more sensitive to precipitation than temperature changes.
• Recharge is most sensitive to precipitation in the wet season.

Study regionGidabo River Basin, located in the south eastern Main Ethiopian Rift (MER).Study focusThe focus is to characterize the spatial and temporal variability of groundwater recharge, identify the drivers that govern its distribution, and to improve the understanding of its sensitivity to precipitation and temperature in the MER by applying the semi-distributed hydrological model, Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT).New hydrological insights for the regionThe average annual recharge for 1998–2010 reveals a remarkable decrease from the highland (410 mm/year) towards the rift floor (25 mm/year). Both the spatial and temporal recharge variability is mainly controlled by the climate. In the rift floor, recharge is found to occur only when annual precipitation exceeds a threshold of approximately 800 mm. A sensitivity analysis reveals that annual recharge is very sensitive to variations in precipitation and moderately sensitive to temperature changes. The relative sensitivity increases from the highland to the rift floor across the watershed. Increases in both precipitation and temperature, as suggested by climate change projections for Ethiopia, appear to have an overall positive impact on recharge in the majority of the catchment. These findings have implications also for other catchments where recharge is spatially nonuniform and provide a basis for further investigations into the assessment of groundwater resources and their vulnerability to climate change at the watershed and sub-watershed scale.