- Title
- Using GIS and Remote Sensing to identify water-stressed areas in South Africa - A case study of the Raymond Mhlaba Local Municipality, Eastern Cape Province
- Creator
- Malunda, Kasongo Benjamin
- Subject
- Water-supply Droughts
- Date Issued
- 2019
- Date
- 2019
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Masters
- Type
- MSc
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/17238
- Identifier
- vital:40868
- Description
- The main purpose of this study is to identify water stressed areas as a response to climate variability (Drought), Aridity, and water exploitation in the Raymond Mhlaba Local Municipality (RMLM) using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS). This study focused on evaluating whether it is best to address the issue of drought and water stress as a municipal problem instead of a community-based problem. To achieve this, the study was attempting to establish four things: the climate condition of the municipality, whether the municipality is a drought prone area, how the surface water is being exploited in the municipality, and identify areas that should be considered water stressed areas. There are several indices used to compute water stress and the study opted for indices that can monitor climate variability, and surface water resources. Therefore, the de Martone Aridity Index (MA) was used to compute the aridity of the municipality the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) to compute drought, and the Water Exploitation Index (WEI) to measure population water exploitation. Data used was from 25 weather stations provided by the Meteoblue website and water data from the department of water and sanitation. Thereafter, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to determine the weights of each variables’ contribution to water stress. For validation, the Shapiro, Jarqua Bera and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests were used and results showed that the data was normally distributed and a two-sample t-test confirmed that there was no significant difference between the measured and simulated data. According to the de Martonne there are three main climatic regions in the Raymond Mhlaba Municipality namely: the Mediterranean, semi-humid and humid region. The Mediterranean region is equally prone to drought as the humid region while the semi-humid region was a wet prone. This was contradictory to literature that expected drier regions to experience more frequent drought. However, this may have been influenced by the number of weather points that cover the humid region that is far lower than the ones covering the Mediterranean region. In addition, the municipality is 50% drought prone and would experience extreme events about 30% of the time. The study discovered that towns such as Fort Beaufort, Alice, Adelaide, and Middle drift are water stressed areas. While most of the other regions are low water users. These challenges with water stress could be reduced with the implementation of water saving mechanisms such as water tanks and the avoidance of addressing water stress as municipal challenges as opposed to a town specific challenge.
- Format
- 134 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Science and Agriculture
- Language
- English
- Rights
- University of Fort Hare
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UFH Department of GIS & Remote Sensing
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Malunda Kasongo_201202489_MSC_Dissertation.pdf | 3 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |