The title of Dr. Birtukan’s dissertation is “Examining Water Accounting for Water Intensive Products to Understand the Impact on Sustainable Water Availability in the Upper Awash River Basin, Ethiopia”. It was conducted in the upper awash basin of central Ethiopia, applying water accounting method from water footprint (WF) perspectives with four main objectives. The first objective focuses on the spatio-temporal variability and trend of WF for rain fed and irrigated crops based on the WF network approach. The second objective aimed at investigating the decadal land use land cover changes (past and future) and the effects of urban sprawl in the basin using remote sensing techniques. The third objective emphasizes the quantification of freshwater availability using an eco-hydrological model. The last objective integrates the green-blue water footprint and water availability to characterize the basin water scarcity level.

Additionally, in Dr. Birtukan’s research the green, blue and economic water productivity of the basin was determined. The total WF of irrigated sugarcane is lower than that of rain fed crops in the basin. In addition, urban sprawls substantially expanded at the expense of cultivated land over the past two decades in the basin. Further findings reveal that low to moderat green water scarcity for rain fed crops, and low to significant blue water scarcity for irrigated sugarcane were observed. Future research should prioritize quantifying WFs for expanding industrial and domestic sectors in the basin.

Prof Feleke Zewge was the chairperson of the defense session of this dissertation. The dissertation was mainly supervised by Dr. Dessie Nedaw whereas Prof. Asfawossen Asrat was Co supervisor, both from Addis Ababa University. Dr. Tena Alamirew from Addis Ababa University and Prof. Assefa M. Melesse, from Florida International University were internal and external examiners respectively.