Establishment of the Baseline for the IWRM in the Ecuadorian Andean Basins: Land Use Change, Water Recharge, Meteorological Forecast and Hydrological Modeling

Christian Mera-Parra, Fernando Oñate-Valdivieso, Priscilla Massa-Sánchez and Pablo Ochoa-Cueva
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Christian Mera-Parra: Master’s in Water Resources, Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, San Cayetano Alto s/n, Loja 1101608, Ecuador
Fernando Oñate-Valdivieso: Master’s in Water Resources, Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, San Cayetano Alto s/n, Loja 1101608, Ecuador
Pablo Ochoa-Cueva: Master’s in Water Resources, Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, San Cayetano Alto s/n, Loja 1101608, Ecuador

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 5, 1-18

Abstract: This study was conducted in the Zamora Huayco (ZH) river basin, located in the inter-Andean region of southern Ecuador. The objective was to describe, through land use/land cover change (LUCC), the natural physical processes under current conditions and to project them to 2029. Moreover, temperature and precipitation forecasts were estimated to detail possible effects of climate change. Using remote sensing techniques, satellite images were processed to prepare a projection to 2029. Water recharge was estimated considering the effects of slope, groundcover, and soil texture. Flash floods were estimated using lumped models, concatenating the information to HEC RAS. Water availability was estimated with a semi-distributed hydrological model (SWAT). Precipitation and temperature data were forecasted using autoregressive and exponential smoothing models. Under the forecast, forest and shrub covers show a growth of 6.6%, water recharge projects an increase of 7.16%. Flood flows suffer a reduction of up to 16.54%, and the flow regime with a 90% of probability of exceedance is 1.85% (7.72 l/s) higher for 2029 than for the 2019 scenario, so an improvement in flow regulation is evident. Forecasts show an increase in average temperature of 0.11 °C and 15.63% in extreme rainfall by 2029. Therefore, intervention strategies in Andean basins should be supported by prospective studies that use these key variables of the system for an integrated management of water resources.

Keywords: land use/land cover change; water recharge; flooding; meteorological forecast; hydrological response; IWRM (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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