The cultivated land in the period 1986???2003 of the Gilgel Tekeze catchment recorded an expansion of 1.14 percent and the study by Tegene [21] and Zeleke [34] also reported an expansion of less than 1.5 and 3.5 percent, respectively.Moreover, the expansion of settlements in the area (Figure 2) was also observed mainly as the expense of both cultivated land and grazing land and this also agrees wi