Evaluation of the effects of socioeconomic activities in the change in land use and climate change in threats to floods and droughts in the Tomebamba river basin

The determining factors of global changes are: the decline of biodiversity, changes in atmospheric composition, changes in soil coverage and climate changes. Of these factors the last two are the most important in Andean basins, since they can shoot the hydroclimatic ends and cause negative impacts on the population. Although there are numerous previous studies on the impacts of change in land use and climate change separately, there are few research that analyzes these impacts caused jointly by the two changes in the future. At the regional level and specifically in Andean basins there is very little literature of integral evaluations of future threats such as droughts and floods caused by the interaction of future changes such as the coverage of the soil and its socioeconomic causality of the population, and the changes in the climate. This project aims to improve the understanding of the patterns of these changes and link this knowledge with danger and future threats that can put the population at risk. This approach will be applied in the Tomebamba river basin, located in the south of the Ecuadorian Andes, hoping to obtain results that can be used for decision making in the basin that allow the construction of policies to be promoted for preparation for potential threats and adaptation to future changes. The change of coverage in the study area based on historical geographical information and the changes will be temporarily analyzed through a stochastic model and a model of distribution of the dynamics of land use where the socioeconomic reality of the population and its link with the territorial dynamics in a basin would be incorporated. The climate change scenarios will be determined through the exits of the regional climate model of the third national communication of the Ministry of Environment, applying a scale reduction at the level of weather stations. Climate projections will be developed with two emission scenarios from an optimistic and pessimistic perspective. The projection period will be 30 years. A hydrological modeling will be carried out where the different scenarios of changes for land use and climate change are incorporated and combined. The calibration of the model in the present will be carried out and through the future scenarios the hydrological projections that will allow the analysis of the threats of droughts and floods will be obtained. The development of hydraulic modeling for floods will be carried out with two -dimensional tools and its development will be focused on the middle and low part of the basin (urban area) where future probable flood areas will be obtained. Space-temporal analysis of weather, hydrological and agricultural droughts in the basin by standardized indices will be carried out where the frequency, duration, severity and persistence of the threat in the future will be characterized. All the results and cartographic production of the project will be exposed and open to the public through an informative and interactive platform taking advantage of CEDIA's technological resources.

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