Abstract

LANZA ESPINO, Guadalupe de la; CARBAJAL PEREZ, José Luis; SALINAS RODRIGUEZ, Sergio Alberto  and  BARRIOS ORDONEZ, Jorge Eugenio. Measurement of the ecological flow of the Acaponeta river, Nayarit, comparing different time intervals. Invest. Geog [online]. 2012, n.78, pp.62-74. ISSN 2448-7279.

The diverse management of river water in Mexico has been unequal due to the different anthropological activities, and it is associated with inter-annual changes in the climate and runoff patterns, leading to a loss of the ecosystem integrity. However, nowadays there are different methods to assess the water volume that is necessary to conserve the environment, among which are hydrological methods, such as those applied here, that are based on information on water volumes recorded over decades, which are not always available in the country. For this reason, this study compares runoff records for different time ranges: minimum of 10 years, medium of 20 years, and more than 50 years, to quantify the environmental flow. These time intervals provided similar results, which mean that not only for the Acaponeta river, but possibly for others lotic systems as well, a 10-year interval may be used satisfactorily. In this river, the runoff water that must be kept for environmental purposes is: for 10 years 70.1%, for 20 years 78.1% and for >50 years 68.8%, with an average of 72.3% of the total water volume or of the average annual runoff.

Keywords : Environmental and ordinary flows; high-pulse; reserve-volume; Acaponeta river; Nayarit.

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