The title of his dissertation is “Groundwater Recharge Input Uncertainty Assessment in the Tikur Wuha River Catchment, Rift Valley Lakes Basin, Ethiopia”.

Dr. Tsegamlak has said despite the availability of groundwater recharge estimation methods, result acquired is still variable and uncertain. His study focus on investigating groundwater recharge estimation uncertainty caused due to input rainfall and evapotranspiration data in the Tikur Wuha watershed. WetSpa was used to simulate 30,000 possible combinations of parameters for three model setups; where required parameter combinations were generated using Monte Carlo simulation stratified by applying Latin Hypercube Sampling. One hundred best performing parameter combinations were selected for each model setup to generate spatial recharge statistics and assess the resulting uncertainty.

Dr. Tsegamlak stated PVE improvement up to 70% (wet) and 50% (dry) of rainfall was achieved through merging technique. Additionally, the use of improved CHIRP-based merged rainfall has reduced the recharge uncertainty. Furthermore, replacement of evapotranspiration estimates with GLEAM data set has reduced the Cv value by 54%. Future studies are recommended to consider contribution of irrigation, for the analysis of recharge uncertainty.

Prof. Feleke Zewge,was the chairperson of the defense session of this dissertation. The dissertation was mainly supervised by Dr. Fasikaw Atanaw from Bahir Dar University and co-supervised by two experts namely Dr. Dessie Nedaw and Dr. Sirak Tekleab both from Addis Ababa University. Prof. Seifu Admassu from Bahir Dar University and Prof. Assefa M. Melesse, from Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA were internal and external examiners respectively.