Addi Shihu is a

reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...

located in the Atsbi Wenberta ''woreda'' of the

Tigray Region The Tigray Region (or simply Tigray; officially the Tigray National Regional State) is the northernmost Regions of Ethiopia, regional state in Ethiopia. The Tigray Region is the homeland of the Tigrayan, Irob people, Irob and Kunama people. I ...

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

. The

earthen dam An embankment dam is a large artificial dam. It is typically created by the placement and compaction of a complex semi-plastic mound of various compositions of soil or rock. It has a semi-pervious waterproof natural covering for its surface ...

that holds the reservoir was built in 1997 by

SAERT Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Rehabilitation in Tigray (SAERT) was a parastatal organisation in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia. It was established in 1995 for "policymaking, design and construction of dams and canals, and the maintenanc ...

Dam characteristics

* Dam height: 10.8 metres * Dam crest length: 301 metres

Capacity

* Original capacity: 1 million m³ * Reservoir area: 36 ha

Irrigation

* Designed irrigated area: 40 ha * Actual irrigated area in 2002: 13 ha

Environment

The

catchment A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, th ...

of the reservoir is 9.4 km² large. The reservoir suffers from rapid

siltation Siltation is water pollution caused by particulate terrestrial clastic material, with a particle size dominated by silt or clay. It refers both to the increased concentration of suspended sediments and to the increased accumulation (temporary o ...

. Part of the water that could be used for irrigation is lost through

seepage In soil mechanics, seepage is the movement of water through soil. If fluid pressures in a soil deposit are uniformly increasing with depth according to u = \rho_w g z_w, where z_w is the depth below the water table, then hydrostatic conditions wi ...

; the positive side-effect is that this contributes to

groundwater recharge Groundwater recharge or deep drainage or deep percolation is a hydrologic process, where water moves downward from surface water to groundwater. Recharge is the primary method through which water enters an aquifer. This process usually occurs in ...

Homonymous places

The town of Addi Shihu, in

Alaje Alaje () is a Districts of Ethiopia, District of Ethiopia, or ''woreda'', in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia. Part of the Debubawi Zone, Alaje is bordered on the south by Endamehoni, on the southwest by the Amhara Region, on the north by Debub Misra ...

woreda is located more than 100 km to the south.

References

{{reflist 1997 establishments in Ethiopia Reservoirs in Ethiopia Tigray Region