The quality of drinking water source remains as a major concern in areas of developing and underdeveloped countries worldwide. The treatment and supply of drinking water in Rwanda are carried out by Water and Sanitation Corporation, a state-owned public company. However, it is not able to supply water to all households. Consequently, the non-serviced households depend on natural water sources, like springs, to meet their water requirements. Nevertheless, the water quality in these springs is scarcely known. Therefore, this study assessed and compared metal elements in drinking water sources in the dry and rainy seasons in 2017 using the contamination degree, metal index, and geographic information systems to reveal the spatial distribution of water quality within the considered water sources of springs in Rwanda. The samples were collected monthly from nine water sources of springs and the measured elements are aluminium, calcium, copper, iron, manganese, and zinc. The metal index indicated that during the dry season and rainy season, the sites of Kibungo (1.10 and 1.26) and Kinigi (1.01 and 1.54) have assessed a metal index which is higher than 1. Thus, the water quality of those sites was getting the threshold of warning. The analysis indicated that pollutants are easily transported into water bodies during the rainy season in urban and rural areas to a greater extent than during the dry season .
The use of appropriate approaches to produce risk maps is critical in landslide disaster management. The aim of this study was to investigate and compare the stability index mapping (SINMAP) and the spatial multicriteria evaluation (SMCE) models for landslide risk modeling in Rwanda. The SINMAP used the digital elevation model in conjunction with physical soil parameters to determine the factor of safety. The SMCE method used six layers of landslide conditioning factors. In total, 155 past landslide locations were used for training and model validation. The results showed that the SMCE performed better than the SINMAP model. Thus, the receiver operating characteristic and three statistical estimators—accuracy, precision, and the root mean square error (RMSE)—were used to validate and compare the predictive capabilities of the two models. Therefore, the area under the curve (AUC) values were 0.883 and 0.798, respectively, for the SMCE and SINMAP. In addition, the SMCE model produced the highest accuracy and precision values of 0.770 and 0.734, respectively. For the RMSE values, the SMCE produced better prediction than SINMAP (0.332 and 0.398, respectively). The overall comparison of results confirmed that both SINMAP and SMCE models are promising approaches for landslide risk prediction in central‐east Africa.
Water is important for human health, industry, agriculture and ensuring the integrity and sustainability of the ecosystem. The water resources are the top affected by climate variability and population growth. The current population of Rwanda is about 12 million heading to about 25 million in 2050 under the changing climate, where since 1970 temperature rose by 1.4°C and is predicted that in 2050 to be about 2.5°C with severe effects on water resources in Rwanda. Thereby, this study reviewed the status and causes of water quality problems and suggested appropriate options to undertake for sustainable water resources access, employ and management in Rwanda. It was noticed that among others, the key threats to water quality in Rwanda, include not limited to climate change causing rainfall patterns which generated flooding, landslides and periodic droughts, which loaded pollutants into water. In addition, water quality is jeopardized by the rapid population growth, agrochemicals, industrialization, urbanization, soil steepness and land mismanagement. Accordingly, the reviewed water quality indicate that the water quality pollution likelihood is increasing over time. These facts reveal that the water quality soon or late will be highly polluted and calls for further adaptation and management measures.
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