Groundwater recharge studies in irrigated lands in Nigeria: Implications for basin sustainability

The potential of managed aquifer recharge (MAR) in semi-arid areas of Nigeria was evaluated using the Kano River irrigation Project (KRIP) as a case study. Groundwater recharge was evaluated daily for 3 years (2009–2011) using the water level fluctuation (wlf) method. Temporal and spatial analyses of recharge were carried out using Microsoft Excel® spread sheet and ArcGIS® 9.0 software. Results show that recharge range from 17 to 32 mm daily on the farmland. Further analysis showed that an average of 8 mm of water is added to storage daily from both rainfall and irrigation. The observed waterlogging problems has implication for salt build up in the area and could be ameliorated by conjunctive use of both surface water and groundwater from the farmland. This will lead to huge water savings that could be released from the Tiga dam to recharge the Chad formation aquifers downstream of the Hadejia River in a systematic MAR implementation via infiltration basin. However, additional modelling studies and aquifer characterization are required to implement this.