Understanding Catchment Processes and Hydrological Modelling in the Abay/Upper Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia

The water resources of the Abay/Upper Blue Nile basin are crucial to meet the demands of agriculture, industry, domestic, and eco-system needs. The basin contributes the largest share of water to the Nile basin. However, the basin exhibits large spatio-temporal variability in rainfall and runoff which challenges meeting the large demands. Consequently, understanding the space and time variation of hydrological processes is critical for sustainable development in the region. This research explores the understanding of catchment processes and hydrological modelling supported by stable environmental isotopes. A variety of methods was employed to gain insights into the dominating runoff generation processes at various scales. The results demonstrate the potential of the different methods to better understand the basin hydrology in a data scarce region as the Nile basin.