Impacto hidrológico en la microcuenca Quinahuaycu a partir de escenarios de cambio de cobertura vegetal

Abstract

The importance of páramos ecosystems is mainly related to water. Its production is due to the weather patterns found in a specific zone and its regulation due to the topography, soil, and vegetation. Nonetheless, these ecosystems are susceptible to any sort of weather or environment changes. In the specific case of the Quinahuaycu catchment, located within the influence zone of the mining project Quimsacocha, the main alteration manner is grazing. Analyzing the effect of these anthropogenic alterations on the páramos hydrology is relevant to enhance the water resource management. Currently, an essential tool to carry out this is the Hydrological Modelling management, this allows to scenarios and test hypotheses. In the following quantitative research study, it was calibrated the conceptual semidistributed HBV-light Hydrological Modelling in the Quinahuaycu catchment, with an 0.793 average efficiency (Nash-Sutcliffe, Eff-Bias, log(Q) y R2) in calibration and 0.73 in validation. After, it was studied the impact in the water regulation, simulating 3 vegetation changes scenarios; recovery of Vegetation Cover (RCN), Increase of herbaceous vegetation due to grazing (AVHp), and Increase of bare soil (ASD). To achieve the stated goals, it was in-deep studied; the actual Morphometrics state, the water network, and the usage of oil and vegetation cover. There were posed rates of exchanges in vegetation to simulate each scenery. Lastly, it was compared the actual state with the simulations analyzing the water yields, the storage of water in soil, the current evapotranspiration, the flow duration curve, the run-off coefficient, and the flow-rate peak ranges.