Abstract

LOPEZ ALVAREZ, Briseida; SANTACRUZ DE LEON, Germán; RAMOS LEAL, José Alfredo  and  MORAN RAMIREZ, Janete. Water poverty index in subtropical zones: The case of Huasteca Potosina, Mexico. Rev. Int. Contam. Ambient [online]. 2015, vol.31, n.2, pp.173-184. ISSN 0188-4999.

Tools are needed in order to evaluate an integrated water resource management, and to encourage the management and coordinated usage of water resources along with the environmental and socioeconomic factors. One of those tools is the Water Poverty Index (WPI), which enables the evaluation of water poverty in terms of the physical and socioeconomic factors related to water availability. The WPI, as calculated in this study, is derived from the weighted sum of six key components -resources, access, usage, capacity, quality and environment- on a scale of 0 to 100. The objective of this work was to calculate the Rio Valles Basin WPI for 2010. This region is a semi-tropical area with abundant water resources, such as large springs. Its annual mean precipitation is 1100 mm. In the Rio Valles Basin, the volume of surface water used per year is 81.33 Mm³, which represents 91 % of the total resource. The volume of groundwater used per year is 8.17 Mm³, representing the remaining 9 %. Usually 45 Mm³/year is stored in La Lajilla dam. These data indicate that surface water is the main source of supply for uses such as agriculture, which is the activity with the largest water demand. A WPi score of 59 was obtained for the Rio Valles Basin.

Keywords : water access; water quality; water availability; human development; hydric resources; Valles River.

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