The study area Ziquala Watershed located at a distance of about 760 km from the capitalrnAddis Ababa city covers an area of about 759 km' . It is one of the drought p;one areas in therncountry. It is found in drought prone areas of the Wag Himra Zone. The area is charocterizedrnby scarcity of water even during the rainy seasons. Agriculture predominantly animal rearingrnis the main stay of the area. Water harvesting structures are extremely important to conservernprecious natural resource like, soil and water, which is depleting day by day at on alarmingrnrate. GIS offers a powerful tool for mapping potential sites for rainfall harvesting. Selection ofrnsuitable sites for artificial recharge and water harvesting structures needs a large volume ofrnmultidisciplinary data from various sources. Remote sensing is of immense use for naturalrnresources mapping and generating necessary spatial database required as input for GISrnanalysis. The most affecting factors on mapping the poten tial sites: landuse, soil, geologicalrnformation, drainage density and slope respectively. The main objective of this study is tornevaluate the landuse/cover change and select and mop suitable sites for different waterrnharvesting structures tor Ziquala watershed. Landuse/cover was prepared using supervisedrnclassification of Landsat imageries of three different years. Post classification analysis wasrnused to reveal the change in landuse/cover during the study periods. During 1988-1999rnperiod more change occur on bareland decreasing by -32.63% and bush land/shrub landrnincreasing by 28.53%. The water harvesting structures considered for this study area arerncheck dam, farm pond, semi-circular bund and contour bund. Multi-criteria evaluation (MCE)rnmethod was used to identify suitable sites for WHSs. Weight was given based on theirrnrelative importance for individual WHS. Check dam with 48.33% has higher coveragernfallowed by contour bund, semi-circular bund and farm pond having 2.8%, 1% and 1%rncoverage respectively. The remote sensing and GIS technique proved to be effective forrngenerating thematic layers, facilitating, analysing and derivation of database managementrnand results.rnKey word: GIS, Landuse/cover change, MCE, Remote sensing, suitability, Water harvesting