Caracterización hidrometeorológica y estimación del balance hídrico de la cuenca del río cutuchi.

Abstract

Basins offer the greatest service as collectors of water for society. The Cutuchi River is considered one of the main sources of water supply in the region between the Lasso sector and the city of Latacunga (extreme south). The objective of the project is to determine the hydrometeorological characteristics and estimate the water balance of this basin. Furthermore, the different interactions between surface and groundwater were assessed by interpreting the results obtained by different factors such as hydrology, geology, climate and vegetation. Data on precipitation and water flow were collected and filled in on a monthly basis. The analysis of the different meteorological variables and the hydrometeorological characterization of the study area was carried out. It was determined that there is a climatic variation in the area due to its proximity to the eastern region. The spatial distribution of annual precipitation in the basin is very irregular, it is in a range that goes from 46.9 to 135.7 mm and most of the stations presented data with bimodal characteristics (maximum peaks in the months January-March and November-December). Similarly, the monthly flow were found in a range of 5 to 16 m3/s with a bimodal regime. Different methods such as Thornthwaite, Penman-Monteith, CRU and MODIS were applied to obtain the potential evapotranspiration. In addition, the water balance in the Cutuchi river sub-basin was calculated with the aforementioned information. Finally, it was determined that the Thornthwaite, Penman-Monteith methods present similar results in terms of potential evapotranspiration with values of up to 830 mm/year.