Comparative analysis of runoff behavior of three Andean micro-catchments with different precipitation regime and vegetation cover

Authors

  • Erika Martínez B. Universidad de Cuenca
  • Cristian I. Coello G. Universidad de Cuenca
  • Jan Feyen Universidad de Cuenca http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2334-6499

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18537/mskn.08.01.12

Keywords:

precipitation, runoff, land cover, native forest, pine forest, paramo

Abstract

The paper presents a descriptive comparative analysis of the precipitation and runoff of three Andean small watersheds (varying in size between 0.6 and 1 km2), using approximately 8 years of rainfall and discharge data, with the objective to relate differences in runoff behavior to the level of annual precipitation, the monthly distribution of rainfall and land use. The catchment covered with native forest receives on average the largest amount of rainfall (1,540 mm/year), whereas the two other catchments, respectively under grassland with extensive cattle breeding and pine trees, receive annually on average respectively 1,267 and 1,181 mm. Although the analysis did not permit to describe in detail the processes controlling the transformation of precipitation into runoff, the exhaustive breakdown of the daily rainfall and runoff data enabled to define the effect of climate and land cover on the runoff pattern of each of the studied micro-catchments. Furthermore, the detailed analysis allowed to accurately identify the type of events whereby the studied micro-catchments show a different response in runoff related to a difference in climate and land use, which would not have been possible to define using only the average monthly precipitation and runoff data of the catchments, a traditional approach in hydrologic consulting services.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Author Biographies

Erika Martínez B., Universidad de Cuenca

Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de Cuenca

Cristian I. Coello G., Universidad de Cuenca

PROMAS, Programa para el Manejo del Agua y del Suelo, Universidad de Cuenca, Cuenca, Ecuador.

Jan Feyen, Universidad de Cuenca

Departamento de Recursos Hídricos y Ciencias Ambientales (iDRHICA), Universidad de Cuenca, Cuenca, Ecuador.

References

Andosol (n.d.). Recuperado de http://www.isric.org/sites/default/files/ major_soils_of_the_world/ set3/an/andosol.pdf

Andrade L, Ríos C (2014). Variabilidad climática y caudales mínimos en los Andes Ecuatorianos. Revista Politécnica 33(1), 9 pp

Baker D, Richards R, Timothy T, Kramer J (2004). A new flashiness index: characteristics and applications to Midwestern rivers and streams. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 40(2):503-522

Bonan GB (1997). Effects of land use on the climate of the United States. Climate Change 37:449-486

Bosch JM, Hewlett JD (1982). A review of catchment experiments to determine the effect of vegetation changes on water yield and evapotranspiration. Journal of Hydrology 55(1):3-23

Brath A, Montanari A, Moretti G (2006). Assessing the effect on flood frequency of land use change via hydrological simulation (with uncertainty). Journal of Hydrology 324(1-4):141-153

Brown DG, Johnson KM, Loveland TR, Theobald DM (2005). Rural land-use trends in the conterminous United States, 1950-2000. Ecological Applications 15(6)1851-1863

Buytaert W, De Bièvre B, Wyseure G, Deckers J, 2004. The use of the linear reservoir concept to quantify the impact of land use changes on the hydrology of catchments in the Ecuadorian Andes. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 8:108-114

Buytaert W, Célleri R, De Bièvre B, Cisneros F (2006a). Hidrología del páramo andino: Propiedades, importancia y vulnerabilidad. Cuenca. Recuperado de http://www. paramo. org/files/hidrologia_paramo. pdf, 26 pp

Buytaert W, Célleri R, De Bièvre B, Cisneros F, Wyseure G, Deckers J, Hofstede R (2006b). Human impact on the hydrology of the Andean páramos. Earth Science Review 79(1):53-72

Buytaert W, Iniguez V, De Bievre B (2007). The effects of afforestation and cultivation on water yield in the Andean páramo. Forest Ecolpgy Management 251(1):22-30

Cantu I, Gonzalez H (2005). Pérdidas por intercepción de la lluvia en tres especies de matorral submontano. Ciencia de la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León 8(1), 6 pp

Célleri R, De Biévre B, Iñiguez V (2004). Efectos de la cobertura vegetal en la regulación hidrológica de microcuencas de páramo. Informe Final. Dirección de Investigación de la Universidad de Cuenca, 23 pp

Cerdà A (1998). Postfire dynamics of erosional processes under mediterranean climatic conditions. Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie 42(3):373-398

Cerdà A (1999). Parent material and vegetation affect soil erosion in eastern Spain. Soil Science Society of America Journal 63:362-368

Cerdà A, Doerr SH (2008). The effect of ash and needle cover on surface runoff and erosion in the immediate post-fire period. Catena 74:256-263

Chazdon RL (2008). Beyond deforestation: restoring forests and ecosystem services on degraded lands. Science 320(5882):1458-1460

Cisneros F, Coello C, Crespo P, De Bièvre B, Feyen J (2007). Análisis de curvas de duración general para determinar el grado de degradación de cuencas hidrográficas. Revista Anales de la Universidad de Cuenca, pp. 71-76

Coello C, Cisneros F, Feyen J (2008). Efecto de la Cobertura Vegetal en la Respuesta Hidrológica de Cuencas Hidrográficas. Revista Anales de la Universidad de Cuenca, pp. 65-70

Copeland JH, Pielke RA, Kittel TGF (1996). Potential climatic impacts of vegetation change: A regional modeling study. Journal of Geophysical Research 101:7409-7418

Corbett ES, Crouse RP (1968). Rainfall interception by annual grass and chaparral losses compared. Berkeley, Calif., Pacific SW. Forest & Range Exp. Sta., U.S. Forest Serv. Res. Paper PSW-48, 12 pp

Costa MH, Botta A, Cardille JA (2003). Effects of large-scale changes in land cover on the discharge of the Tocantins River, Southeastern Amazonia. Journal of Hydrology 283:206-217

Crespo P, Célleri R, Buytaert W, Feyen J, Iñiguez V, Borja P, De Bièvre B (2010). Land use change impacts on the hydrology of wet Andean páramo ecosystems. Status and Perspectives of Hydrology in Small Basins. IAHS Publ 336:71-76

Crespo P, Célleri R, Buytaert W, Ochoa B, Cárdenas I, Iñiguez V, Borja P, De Bièvre B (2014). Impactos del cambio de uso de la tierra sobre la hidrología de los páramos húmedos andinos. En: Cuesta F, Sevink J, Llambí LD, De Bièvre B, Posner (Eds.), Avances en investigación para la conservación de los páramos andinos. CONDESAN, pp. 287-304

Crooks SM, Davies HN (2001). Assessment of land use change in the Thames catchment and its effect on the flood regime of the river. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Part B: Hydrology, Oceans and Atmosphere 26(7-8):583-591

De Roo A, Odijk M, Schmuck C, Koster E, Lucieer A (2001). Assessing the effects of land use changes on floods in the Meuse and Oder catchments. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Part B: Hydrology, Oceans and Atmosphere 26(7-8):593-599

Descroix L, Viramontes D, Vauclin M, Gonzalez Barrios JL, Esteves M (2001). Influence of soil Surface features and vegetation on runoff and erosion in the Western Sierra Madre (Durango, Northwest Mexico). Catena 43(2):115-135

Fang N-F, Shi Z-H, Li L, Guo Z-L, Liu Q-J, Ai L (2012). The effects of rainfall regimes and land use changes on runoff and soil loss in a small mountainous watershed. Catena 99:1-8

FAO (2002). Land-water linkages in rural watersheds. Case Study Series, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy. Disponible en ftp://ftp.fao.org/agl/aglw/docs/lw9e.pdf, 90 pp

Farley K, Jobbágy E, Jackson R (2005). Effects of afforestation on water yield: A global synthesis with implications for policy. Global Change Biology 11(10): 1565-1576

Farley K, Kelly E, Hofstede R (2004). Soil organic carbon and water retention after conversion of grasslands to pine plantations in the Ecuadorian Andes. Ecosystems 7(7):729-739

Fohrer N, Haverkamp S, Eckhardt K, Frede H (2001). Hydrologic response to land use changes on the catchment scale. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Part B: Hydrology, Oceans and Atmosphere 26(7-8):577-582

Ghaffari G, Keesstra S, Ghodousi J, Ahmadi H (2010). SWAT-simulated hydrological impact of land-use change in the Zanjanrood Basin, Northwest Iran. Hydrological Processes 24(7):892-903

Guevara-Escobar A, González-Sosa E, Véliz-Chávez C, Ventura-Ramos E, Ramos-Salinas M (2007). Rainfall interception and distribution patterns of gross precipitation around an isolated Ficus benjamina tree in an urban area. Journal of Hydrology 333(2):532-541

Han S, Yang Y, Fan T, Xiao D, Moiwo JP, 2012. Precipitation-runoff processes in Shimen hillslope micro-catchment of Taihang Mountain, north China. Hydrological Processes 26(9):1332-1341

Harden CP (1991). Land-use, soil-erosion, and reservoir sedimentation in an Andean drainage basin in Ecuador. International Workshop and Field Excursions: Mountain Geoecology of the Andes Santiago, Chile, pp. 177-184

Haverkamp S, Fohrer N, Frede H-G (2005). Assessment of the effect of land use patterns on hydrologic landscape functions: a comprehensive GIS-based tool to minimize model uncertainty resulting from spatial aggregation. Hydrological Processes 19(3):715-727

Hofstede R (1998). Impactos ecológicos de plantaciones forestales. In: II Conferencia Electrónica sobre Usos Sostenibles y Conservación del Ecosistema Páramo en los Andes, Disponible en http://infoandina.mtnforum.org/sites/default/files/publication /files/Impactos_ecol_gicos_de_plantaciones_forestales.pdf, 9 pp

Hofstede R (2011). Un árbol no siempre es más agua: a propósito de las políticas de (re) forestación. CONDESAN, Propuestas Andinas, #3, 3 pp

Jiménez F (2005). El bosque como regulador del ciclo hidrológico. Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación Y Enseñanza, CATIE. Costa Rica. Disponible en http://www.inecc.gob.mx/descargas/dgipea/fran_jimenez.pdf, 25 pp

Knox JC (2001). Agricultural influence on landscape sensitivity in the Upper Mississippi River Valley. Catena 42(2):193-224

Kotei R, Kyei-Baffour N, Ofori E, Agyare W (2013). Changes in the Sumampa streamflow flashiness in the forest-savannah transitional zone, Mampong-Ashant, Ghana 1985-2009. Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences 8(9):770-778

Krajenbrink HJ (2007). Application of SWAT for rainfall-runoff modelling in small tropical mountainous catchments in Ecuador. MSc Thesis, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Lahmer W, Pfutzner B, Becker A, 2001. Assessment of land use and climate change impacts on the mesoscale. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Part B: Hydrology, Oceans and Atmosphere 26(7-8):565-575

Li T, Gao Y (2015). Runoff and sediment yield variations in response to precipitation changes: A case study of Xichuan watershed in the loess plateau, China. Water 7(10):5638-5656

Li Z, Liu W, Zhang X, Zheng F (2009). Impacts of land use change and climate variability on hydrology in an agricultural catchment on the Loess Plateau of China. Journal of Hydrology 377(1):35-42

Lin Y-P, Hong N-M, Wu P-J, Wu C-F, Verburg PH (2007). Impacts of land use change scenarios on hydrology and land use patterns in the Wu-Tu watershed in Northern Taiwan. Landscape and Urban Planning 80(1):111-126

Lørup JK, Refsgaard JC, Mazvimavib D (1998). Assessing the effect of land use change on catchment runoff by combined use of statistical tests and hydrological modelling: Case studies from Zimbabwe. Journal of Hydrology 205:147-163

Mao D, Cherkauer KA (2009). Impacts of land-use change on hydrologic responses in the Great Lakes region. Journal of Hydrology 374(1):71-82

Martínez-Zavala L, Jordán A (2008). Effect of rock fragment cover on interrill soil erosion from bare soils in Western Andalusia, Spain. Soil Use and Management 24(1):108-117

Molina A, Govers G, Vanacker V, Poesen J, Zeelmaekers E, Cisneros F (2007). Runoff generation in a degraded Andean ecosystem: Interaction of vegetation cover and land use. Catena 71:357-370

Molina A, Vanacker V, Balthazar V, Mora D, Govers G (2012). Complex land cover change, water and sediment yield in a degraded Andean environment. Journal of Hydrology 472-473:25-35

Nanzyo M, Shoji S, Dahlgren R (1993). Physical characteristics of volcanic ash soils. In: Shoji, S., M. Nanzyo, R. Dahlgren (Eds.), Volcanic ash soils: genesis, properties and utilization. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., 288 pp

Neris J, Tejedor M, Rodríguez M, Fuentes J, Jiménez C (2013). Effect of forest floor characteristics on water repellency, infiltration, runoff and soil loss in Andisols of Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain). Catena 108:50-57

OEHHA (2015). Flashiness indicator. Recuperado de http://oehha.ca.gov/ecotox/drycreek/ Flashiness_2015.pdf

Pan Z, Takle E, Segal M, Anritt R (1999). Simulation of potential impacts of manmade land use changes on US summer climate under various synoptic regimes. Journal of Geophysical Research 104:6515-6528

Perrin JL, Bouvier C, Janeau JL, Menez G, Cruz F (2001). Rainfall/runoff processes in a small peri-urban catchment in the Andes mountains. The Rumihurcu Quebrada, Quito (Ecuador). Hydrological Processes 15:843-854

Prowse TD, Beltaos D, Gardner JT, Gibson JJ, Granger RJ, Leconte R, Peters DL, Pietroniro A, Romolo LA, Toth B (2006). Climate change, flow regulation and land-use effects on the hydrology of the Peace-Athabasca-Slave system; findings from the northern rivers ecosystem initiative. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 113(1-3):167-197

Rutter AJ (1959). Evaporation from a plantation of pinus sylvestris in relation to meteorological and soil conditions. Available at http://hydrologie.org/redbooks/a048/048012.pdf, pp. 101-110

Rutter AJ (1963). Studies in the water relations of Pinus Sylvestris in plantation conditions I. Measurements of rainfall and interception. Journal of Ecology 51(1):191-203

Rutter AJ (1967). An analysis of evaporation from a stand of Scots pine. Forest Hydrology 403:417

Scott DF, Bruijnzeel LA, Mackensen J, 2005. The hydrological and soil impacts of forestation in the tropics. In: Bonell, M., L.A. Bruijnzeel (Eds.), Forests, Water and People in the Humid Tropics, Chap. 25, pp. 622-651

Sriwongsitanon N, Taesombat W (2011). Effects of land cover on runoff coefficient. Journal of Hydrology 410(3):226-238

Tollan A (2002). Land-use change and floods: what do we need most, research or management? Water Science and Technology 45(8):183-190

Tomer MD, Schilling KE (2009). A simple approach to distinguish land-use and climate-change effects on watershed hydrology. Journal of Hydrology 376(1):24-33

Twine TE, Kucharik CJ, Foley JA (2004). Effects of Land Cover Change on the Energy and Water Balance of the Mississippi River Basin. Journal of Hydrometeorology 5(4):640-655

Vuille M (2013). El cambio climático y los recursos hídricos en los Andes tropicales. BID, Disponible en http://facets.sdsu.edu/Glaciar_CCRRR.pdf, 33 pp

Wagner PD, Kumar S, Schneider K (2013). An assessment of land use change impacts on the water resources of the Mula and Mutha Rivers catchment upstream of Pune, India. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 17(6):2233-2246

Wang GX, Zhang Y, Liu GM, Chen L (2006). Impact of land use change on hydrological processes in the Maying River basin, China. Science in China Serie D-Earth Sciences 49(10):1098-1110

Willems P (2004). WETSPRO: Water Engineering Time Series PROcessing tool. KU Leuven Hydraulics Laboratory, Leuven Belgium. Manual available at http://www.kuleuven.be/hydr/pw/WETSPRO%20manual.pdf, 22 pp

Woods SW, Balfour VN (2008). The effect of ash on runoff and erosion after a severe forest wildfire, Montana, USA. International Journal of Wildland Fire 17:535-548

Woods SW, Balfour VN (2010). The effects of soil texture and ash thickness on the post-fire hydrological response from ash covered soils. Journal of Hydrology 393:274-286

Zavala LM, Jordán A, Gil J, Bellifante N, Pain C (2009). Intact ash and charred litter reduces susceptibility to rain splash erosion post-wildfire. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 34:1522-1532

Published

2017-06-19

How to Cite

Martínez B., E., Coello G., C. I., & Feyen, J. (2017). Comparative analysis of runoff behavior of three Andean micro-catchments with different precipitation regime and vegetation cover. Maskana, 8(1), 129–144. https://doi.org/10.18537/mskn.08.01.12

Issue

Section

Research articles

Most read articles by the same author(s)

> >>