Regionalización hidrológica con métodos estadísticos multivariados

Abstract

Water is a scarce resource, either because of its quality, quantity or its occurrence. But at the same time, the conditions of excess give rise to critical situations of water risk, either by increasing the hydrological threat, social vulnerability, or both. This requires that appropriate management strategies be put in place to ensure their efficient and rational use. The hydrographic basin is usually considered as a unit of water resources management. For that, the hydrological homogeneous zones identification should be taken into account in the estimation of those hydrological variables involved in the management strategies approach (design flows, scenarios, project works and water course capacity, among others) and to contemplate the heterogeneity of the environments within this management unit. The term regionalization is used in hydrology to refer to the transfer of information from one site to another within an area of similar hydrological behavior. Thus, regionalization is used to obtain hydrological information in sites with no data or little information. The principle of regionalization is the spatial similarity of some functions, variables and parameters that allow such transfer. An additional benefit of regional information analysis is its contribution to the improvement of a network of hydroclimatic data observations, as the methodology explores the available information and identifies gaps. The objective of this research was to determine which variables are significant for delimiting homogeneous hydrological regions by applying multivariate statistical methods. The information available in the watersheds of Peru has been considered for the analysis and a comparative analysis has been carried out with the Uruguay River basin. The results obtained indicate the convenience of using several multivariate methods together and the use of Andrews` curves for the identification and interpretation of the defined regions. The area, precipitation, channel length and flow were the most important physical and hydrological variables in the differentiation of homogeneous hydrological regions.