Abstract
South Africa is just slowly emerging from its past turbulent history with some of its
population still not able to access some of the basic services such as water. This study was aimed
at evaluating changes in land use land cover within the Jukskei River basin and its implications
on the water availability. The study used Archydro tools on ArcMap of the ArcGIS program to
delineate the Jukskei River catchment, then, used the delineated catchment to clip off the land
use land cover (LULC) maps for the periods 1990, 2014 and 2020. The total area of the
catchment was determined to be 800 km2, and land use practices were assessed for 1990, 2014
and 2020 LULC maps. The major land use classifications found within the catchment were
agriculture, bare-land, forests, grassland, settlements (built-up area), mines, waterbodies, and
wetlands. The study showed that settlements accounted for the greatest portion of the Jukskei
River catchment, compared to other land use categories. The runoff was determined for the 2, 5,
10 and 20 years return periods. The study showed that runoff increased by 8.33% due to 2020
land uses (70% imperviousness), from those values calculated for 1990 and 2014 land uses which
had 60.87 and 61.58% imperviousness respectively. Therefore, the results revealed that a large
quantity of water (runoff) is generated in the catchment and then surrendered into the Limpopo
River and eventually wasted into the Indian Ocean. The study also showed that an increase in
imperviousness due to land use practices resulted in an increase in surface runoff, thus having
negative implications on the catchment’s water availability.