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The aim of this study was to investigate the main factors that influence smallholders' adoption decision of soil conservation measures in the Gedeb watershed. Data from 498 household heads who live in the three districts of the watershed were analysed using the binary logistic regression model. We find that farmers need adequate cash to invest in soil conservation measures. Moreover, farmers would be more encouraged to implement soil conservation measures when they have larger areas of cropland. We explore the possibility that when farmers presume that they have fertile land, they exploit their land more. This hints at the need for extension advice about the benefit of sustainable use of farmers' cropland so that they can maintain their land and pass it on to the future generation. Farmers' awareness about the benefit of land management practices and recognition of the problem erosion is causing on their crop land are central to their decision to adopt soil conservation measures. Furthermore, to adopt these measures, farmers have to be convinced about the effectiveness of these measures. Thus, awareness creation and demonstration of the effectiveness of these measures is essential. Because of the transboundary nature of the problem, policy makers in downstream countries that are suffering from the off-site impact (e.g. Sudan) would benefit from the information provided and support efforts in the implementation of soil conservation measures.

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Abstract. This paper reviews the changing relation between human beings and water since the Industrial Revolution, a period that has been called the Anthropocene because of the unprecedented scale at which humans have altered the planet during this time. We show how the rapidly changing world urges us to continuously improve our understanding of the complex interactions between humans and the water system. The paper starts by demonstrating that hydrology and the science of managing water resources have played key roles in human and economic development throughout history; yet these roles have often been marginalised or obscured. Knowledge of hydrology and water resources engineering and management helped to transform the landscape, and thus also the very hydrology within catchments itself. It is only fairly recent that water experts have become conscious of such mechanisms, exemplified by several concepts that try to incorporate them -integrated water resources management, eco-hydrology, socio-hydrology. We have reached a stage at which a more systemic understanding of scale interdependencies can inform the sustainable governance of water systems, using new concepts like precipitation sheds, virtual water transfers, water footprints, and water value flow.

To meet growing population demands for food and other agricultural commodities, agricultural land-use intensification and extensification seems to be increasing in the Abbay (Upper Blue Nile) basin in Ethiopia. However, the amount, location and degree of suitability of the basin for agriculture seem not well studied and/or documented. From global data sources, literature review and field investigation, a number of agricultural land suitability evaluation criteria were identified. These criteria were preprocessed as raster layers on a GIS platform and weights of criteria raster layers in determining suitability were computed using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). A weighted overlay analysis method was used to compute categories of highly suitable, moderately suitable, marginally suitable and unsuitable lands for agriculture in the basin. It was found out that 53.8 % of the basin's land coverage was highly suitable for agriculture and 23.2 % was moderately suitable. The marginally suitable and the unsuitable lands were at 11 and 12 % respectively. From the analysis, regions of the basin with high suitability as well as those with higher susceptibility for land degradation and soil erosion were identified.