Hydrological processes and water resources management in a dryland environment I: An introduction to the Romwe Catchment Study in Southern Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe during the 1980s and early 1990s, a sequence of severe droughts caused widespread food shortages and great hardship to rural communities. The droughts exacerbated the problems of environmental degradation in commu nal lands and highlighted the lack of understanding of the links between th e climate, land use and hydrology of dryland regions. The Romwe Catchment S tudy addresses these issues, and has led to the establishment of the first fully-instrumented research catchment in a communally-managed dryland envir onment in southern Africa. The key objectives were (a) to improve the under standing of hydrological processes in communal land areas, mostly underlain by crystalline basement aquifers, and (b) to investigate the impacts of va riations in climate and changes in land use and management on the hydrology and water resources. In this introductory paper, the physical characterist ics of the catchment are described together with the instrumentation to mon itor hydrological processes and quantify the catchment water balance.