Modeling water table dynamics of tropical wetlands in North Central Nigeria

The increasing frequency of drought, hunger, migration, malnutrition, including societal unrest has been linked with cases of water stress and climatic aggravation on the Earth’s water resources. As a targeted strategy to contribute towards integrated water resources management, this study emerged as a tool to model and predict cultivable wetland potential for water sustainability. The study took an empirical approach, where the experimental site was studied for its water resources availability and sustainability. Stratified random sampling techniques were applied to delineate ten sites within the University of Abuja landmass, where study wells were hand-dug to assess the wetland water table of North Central Nigeria. Descriptive statistics, and autoregressive modelling in time series analysis were conducted for predicting the water table dynamics and temporal dynamics in the wetland. The date and site interaction showed a significant difference between the means across all sources of variation. Significant variations in water table depth across ten sampled wells were found, with a first-order autoregressive model: which indicated a high correlation (r = 0.9114) between predicted and observed values. The combination of field experimentation and statistical prediction in this study remains critically novel in the assessment of water table dynamics towards integrated water resources dynamics. The study remains significant as a tool for assessing wetland suitability for water-return sustainability.