Abstract
ABSTRACT Brazil is a large country that depends on the hydroelectricity generation hydropower dams. The Upper Grande River Basin (UGRB) is one of the most important Brazilian hydrological regions in terms of water availability and electric energy production. Therefore, studies of water availability are indispensable for a better and more successful decision making in water resources management in the region. This study objective to approach the land-use influence on the soil hydrology in the Upper Grande River Basin, a strategic headwater basin of southeastern Brazil. This study uses hydrological indicators (baseflow/runoff (BF/R) and overland flow/runoff (OF/R)) extracted from eight watersheds, varying the size and localization in the region, to support the results found. Soil saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ko) was determined in situ using a constant flow permeameter, totaling 224 sampled points. Five machine learning algorithms were compared in their performance to predict Ko (Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, Gradient Boosting, Linear Regression, Regularization) using terrain attributes as covariates. The tested methods for predicting Ko resulted in a relatively low coefficient of determination (R2) due to the high spatial variability of this soil hydrologic attribute. The hydrological indicator BF/R was sensitive to land-use changes in the watersheds. The greatest Ko values were associated with native forest and the least values area associated with pasture and rupestrian field.
Highlights
The Upper Grande River Basin (UGRB) is responsible for the drainage of several rivers in Southeastern Brazil
It is important to note that remnants of native forests (Atlantic Forest) in southeastern Brazil are mostly found in areas with the steepest relief, not prone to agriculture (Silva et al, 2007) such as the steep hills and mountainous areas like UGRB region
There is a significant correspondence between the hydrological indicator baseflow/runoff and land-use showing that this hydrological indicator was sensitive to land-use changes in the watersheds
Summary
The Upper Grande River Basin (UGRB) is responsible for the drainage of several rivers in Southeastern Brazil It is a hydrologic region of great importance for the Brazilian Electric Energy System, feeding several reservoirs, where Furnas hydropower plant highlights. Pinto et al (2015) evaluated the role of the Inceptisols of the Mantiqueira Range region, in UGRB, on the hydrology of catchments under pasture and native forest They found much higher saturated soil hydraulic conductivity in the forested watershed with greater base flow amount than in watersheds with predominance of pasture. Studies of water availability in this region are indispensable for a better and more successful decision making on soil-water conservation and management In this direction, one of the most important processes to be understood in a watershed is the saturated soil hydraulic conductivity (Ko) behavior due to its intrinsic relationship with infiltration and with groundwater recharge
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