Impact of Land Cover Changes on the Availability of Water Resources in the Regional Natural Park Serranía de Las Quinchas

Yuddy Alejandra Castro Ortegón, Julio César Acosta-Prado and Pedro Mauricio Acosta Castellanos
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Yuddy Alejandra Castro Ortegón: School of Accounting, Economic and Business Sciences, Universidad de Manizales, Manizales 170001, Colombia
Julio César Acosta-Prado: School of Business Science, Universidad del Pacífico, Lima 15072, Peru
Pedro Mauricio Acosta Castellanos: Civil Engineering Faculty, Universidad Santo Tomás, Tunja 150001, Colombia

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 6, 1-20

Abstract: Protected areas offer environmental goods and services to local communities, who have based their aptitude on the availability of water resources with practices associated with the legacy of their ancestors. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of changes in land cover on the availability of water resources in the Serrania de Las Quinchas Regional Natural Park (PNRSQ), located in the department of Boyacá, Colombia. The SWAT tool and the Corine Land Cover methodology were used between 2008 and 2017. In addition, data of hydrometeorological tests were used to determine the water behavior of the basin together with the Digital Elevation Model (DEM). The results show that after the declaration of the area as a protection zone in 2008, there have been changes in the land cover producing a greater availability of water resources and the partial restoration of the study area. Additionally, hydrological modeling allowed knows the behavior of the basin under different conditions. The resulting information allows decision-makers to evaluate the best options to guarantee water resources and generate strategies that allow communities to reinvent their way of production and adapt to ecosystem conditions without affecting their ecological functioning.

Keywords: land cover; water resources; protected areas; tropical rainforest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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