Mapping of Groundwater through the Integration of Remote Sensing and Vertical Electrical Sounding in ASALs: A Case Study of Turkana South Sub-County, Kenya

Abstract

Turkana South Sub-County falls in the arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya, which are characterized temperatures of 20˚C to 41˚C with an average of 30.5˚C and precipitation in the range of 52 mm to 480 mm per year. The area has limited availability of water resources. The area has a land surface of 18,000 km 2 and lies between Longitudes 35˚10'00" and 36˚45'00" East and between Latitudes 1˚0'00" and 3˚0'00" North. The study area faces immense difficulties in trying to meet its water requirements for her rapidly increasing populace, livestock needs and other developmental programmes. Surface water in the area is becoming unobtainable, thus the choice of groundwater exploitation. Indeed with the snowballing demand necessitated by energy, agricultural and livestock production needs in this area, there is an appeal into investigation for groundwater in this greatly remote and extensive area. Thus, the success in the exploration, development and management of groundwater in such a large area calls for such methods that can easily be used to zero down to exploitable targets. Given the expansiveness of the study area, remote sensing (RS) has been used to map lineaments which in turn have been used to deduce faulting affecting the geology of the area. The mapping by RS helped in identifying weathered zones, the fracture systems and fault zones sign of deeper weathered zones which are interpreted to be potential areas since mainly water is stored within fractures and the weathered zones in subterranean and in hard rocks. In the field topographic expressions of faults and fractures which include; joints, fractures, scarps, river channels and slope How to cite this paper: Nyaberi, D. M.,

ICDP workshop on the Deep Drilling in the Turkana Basin project: exploring the link between environmental factors and hominin evolution over the past 4 Myr

“…The length scales of proposed rift segments are also generally shorter than other areas in the EARS (Ebinger et al, 1999), possibly reflecting the comparatively thinner, warmer crust in the region (Rosendahl et al, 1992). Finally, models for mature continental rifts in the eastern branch (e.g., Ethiopia) suggest that rifting initiates on border faults, but later migrates to intra-rift structures with time (Corti, 2009;Ebinger and Casey, 2001;Keranen et al, 2004;Nutz et al, 2020). This standard model of rift evolution, however, does not apparently apply to older (> 10 Ma) rift segments in Turkana, which also lack evidence for persistent axial magmatism (e.g., Lokichar and Kerio basin segments; Morley, 2020).…”

“…Groundwater resources are important in this arid to semiarid landscape. Groundwater in some regions of the Turkana Basin has been mapped through subsurface geophysics (Gramling, 2013;Nyaberi et al, 2019) but has not yet yielded the much anticipated fresh water resources as the quality does not meet the health guidelines (Rusiniak et al, 2021;Mbugua et al, 2022). In addition, the quality of shallow groundwater in areas of settlement is impacted by anthropogenic contamination (Tanui et al, 2020).…”

“…(b) Interpreted seismic profile across the basin. Profile redrawn and simplified fromNutz et al (2022). The targeted sequence for onshore drilling will exploit the West Turkana outcrop belt, with staggered holes extending down to ca.…”

Assessment of Groundwater Potential and Prediction of the Potential Trend up to 2042 Using GIS-Based Model and Remote Sensing Techniques for Kiambu County

“…Some of the techniques comprise: drilling, geophysical, geological, hydro-geological and geo-electrical but are deemed expensive and time-consuming. For that reason, the exploration calls for the putting into practice of actual approaches of precision and that saves both time and money [5]. Such approaches include Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) technologies that have been applied extensively in ground studies.…”

“…[2] stacked a few algorithms to create a hybrid model and used the model to perform groundwater mapping. On the other hand, [5] integrated remote sensing and vertical electrical sounding in mapping groundwater potential in Asals areas. [7] and [8] were keen to employ a resistivity survey technique in combination with GIS and remote sensing in prospecting groundwater potential zones.…”