Catchment analysis in the Migina marshlands, southern Rwanda

Rwanda is a small country in Central Africa, a little south from the equator. As the population dependents on agriculture for their livelihood, Rwanda faces the challenge to provide all its inhabitants with enough food; today and tomorrow. Knowledge about the watersystem, wateravailability and development of the waterquality will be necessary to ensure human health nowadays and in the future.

Not much hydrological data is present in Rwanda nowadays; mainly as a result of the civil war in 1994. During this period, a lot of knowhow and equipment was destroyed. Therefore UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education started a capacity building programme in 2004, with the goal to train water specialists at the National University of Rwanda (NUR). Omar Munyaneza is doing a PhD research about the space-time patterns of hydrological processes and water resources in Rwanda, with a special focus on the mesoscale Migina catchment, located in southern Rwanda. In support of this research, a hydrological fieldwork was carried out for the MSc Hydrology at the VU University.

From 16th April 2009 until 31st July 2009 a field study was carried out in Migina catchment, in southern Rwanda. The Migina catchment is a meso-scale catchment of 147 km2, in which Butare, the second city in Rwanda is located in the northern part. The outlet of Migina catchment is located at the border between Rwanda and Burundi, where the river Migina drains into the river Akanyaru.

During the fieldwork, Migina catchment has been equipped with hydrological instruments in order to be able to measure main hydrological processes. Therefore five gauging stations were built, eleven piezometers were installed, a meteorological tower was built up (in addition to one that was already present in Butare), thirteen totalizer rainfall stations were set up as well as four tipping buckets, and one evaporation pan was installed (in addition to one that was already present in Butare). Besides, several soil- and water samples have been taken which were analysed in the field and in the lab.

With the installation of the equipment it was possible to measure and quantify important hydrological parameters such as river discharge, groundwater flow and amounts and distribution of rainfall and total evaporation.

Project details

Project location:	Migina marshlands, Rwanda
	(find climate data for this location)
Project manager:	Harmen van den Berg & Rutger Bolt
External website:	http://www.hydrorwanda.blogspot.com/
Period:	2009-2010