Influence of Land Use Land Cover Change on Groundwater Recharge in the Continental Terminal Area of Abidjan, Ivory Coast

The process by which rainfall reaches the aquifer in a sedimentary area is infiltration. This process could be affected quantitatively or qualitatively by the changes in the land use land cover (LULC) as a result of anthropogenic activities which could affect groundwater reserves. This study focuses on the influence of LULC change on groundwater recharge in the context of urbanization and population growth. Four weather stations data and satellite image data were used in order to evaluate water infiltration which is the amount of water that reaches the piezometric surface from 1990 to 2016. The spatial-temporal LULC change in relation to urbanization sprawl was assessed based on a series of Landsat images for 1990, 2000 and 2016. The maximum likelihood pixel-based on classification method was used to analyze the spatial-temporal LULC dynamics. The Thiessen polygon method was used for the mean area precipitation computation. The recharge was determined using water balance method after determining the runoff based on the Soil Conservation Service curve number method. The results show an increase in built-up and agricultural land, while the forest and shrub areas declined with water body remaining unchanged over the period 1990-2016. The decline in forest could be imputed to the demographic and socio-economic growth as expressed by the expansion of agriculture and urbanization. Groundwater recharge and runoff results are respectively 34%, 20% in 1999; 21%, 46% in 2000 and 26%, 14% in 2016 of rainfall and show their strong dependence on precipitation and LULC change.