ABSTRACT
The Lower Pra River Basin (LPRB), located in the forest zone of southern Ghana has experienced changes due to variability in precipitation and diverse anthropogenic activities. Therefore, to maintain the functions of the ecosystem for water resources management, planning and sustainable development, it is important to differentiate the impacts of precipitation variability and anthropogenic activities on stream flow changes. We investigated the variability in runoff and quantified the contributions of precipitation and anthropogenic activities on runoff at the LPRB. Analysis of the precipitation-runoff for the period 1970-2010 revealed breakpoints in 1986, 2000, 2004 and 2010 in the LPRB. The periods influenced by anthropogenic activities were categorized into three periods 1987-2000, 2001-2004 and 2005-2010, revealing a decrease in runoff during 1987-2000 and an increase in runoff during 2001-2004 and 2005-2010. Assessment of monthly, seasonal and annual runoff depicted a significant increasing trend in the runoff time series during the dry season. Generally, runoff increased at a rate of 9.98 × 107m3yr-1, with precipitation variability and human activities contributing 17.4% and 82.3% respectively. The dominant small scale alluvial gold mining activity significantly contributes to the net runoff variability in LPRB.
ABSTRACT
The outcome reveal that as the land use in the catchment areas change from mixed agricultural to cassava cultivation, the simulated loads and concentrations of nitrogen species from cassava land-use scenario recorded reduction. The resultant concentrations of nitrate and nitrite for both current and future land-use scenarios are all below the daily limit suggested by the WHO, (World Health Organization). For the phosphate concentration, an increase of 4.21% was depicted under cassava land-use scenario. The results show that SWAT is a reliable water quality model, capable of simulating accurate information for developing environmental management plans.
ABSTRACT
Digital elevation model (DEM) in recent times has become an integral part of national spatial data infrastructure of many countries world-wide due to its invaluable importance. Although DEMs are mostly generated from contours maps, stereo aerial photographs and air-borne and terrestrial laser scanning, the stereo interpretation and auto-correlation from satellite image stereo-pairs such as with SPOT, IRS, and relatively new ASTER imagery is also an effective means of producing DEM data. In this study, terrain elevation data were derived by applying photogrammetric process to ASTER stereo imagery. Also, the quality ofDEMs produced from ASTER stereo imagery was analysed by comparing it with DEM produced from topographic map at a scale of 1:50,000. While analyzing the vertical accuracy of the generated ASTER DEM, fifty ground control points were extracted from the map and overlaid on the DEM. Results indicate that a root-mean-square error in elevation of +/- 14 m was achieved with ASTER stereo image data of good quality. The horizontal accuracy obtained from the ground control points was 14.77, which is within the acceptable range of +/- 7m to +/- 25 m. The generated (15 m) DEM was compared with a 20m, 25m, and a 30 m pixel DEM to the original map. In all, the results proved that, the 15 m DEM conform to the original map DEM than the others. Overall, this analysis proves that, the generated digital terrain model, DEM is acceptable.
