Diseño de medidas de conservación para las zonas de recarga hídrica potencial en los ecosistemas frágiles de la parroquia Cebadas, cantón Guamote, provincia de Chimborazo.

Abstract

This research aimed to design conservation measures for recharge zones water potential in the fragile ecosystems of the Cebadas town, which covers an area of 24,177 hectares. These areas are the main source of water storage that occurs through infiltration process into the aquifers. These sectors present serious threats due to the constant conversion of land use from native vegetation to areas destined for agriculture and plantations forestry. The soil water balance methodology proposed by Schosinsky was used to calculate the water recharge including rainfall and temperature data from the platform WorldClim 2.1, and in situ soil analysis. The analysis multicriteria was conducted to identify threats using raster and vector layers of vegetation cover, precipitation, slope; soil texture and land cover and use that were processed in ArcGis 10.8 software. The Logical Framework Matrix methodology starting from a baseline was used to design measures. The results indicated that the annual potential recharge reaches 136211317.1 cubic meters of water, two high-category threats were identified: areas susceptible to landslides of landare located to the southeast and correspond to 6,639,542 hectares. The advance of the agricultural frontier was accentuated to the southwest of the town with an area of 2262,724 hectares. The measures proposals for the preservation of the natural environment were the implementation of environmental incentives, environmental education, and reforestation. I was concluded that if the dynamics of land use change continually, the ecosystem services supplying water recharge zones were found committed to the medium and long term. In future studies, it was recommended to use climatic data ofmeteorological stations to determine the variation of results with themethodology used.