Abstract

ORTIZ-GOMEZ, Ruperto; GONZALEZ-CAMACHO, Juan M.  and  CHAVEZ-MORALES, Jesús. Water allocation model considering a minimum environmental flow in the Metztitlán river basin in Hidalgo, México. Agrociencia [online]. 2015, vol.49, n.7, pp.703-721. ISSN 2521-9766.

Optimal water allocation in a basin is essential to improve sustainable use of water resources. In this respect, systems analysis is the principal tool used in water allocation, although generally, this analysis does not consider environmental demand. Therefore, the objetive of this research was to develop a model of linear optimization to evaluate different monthly surface water allocation scenarios in the Metztitlán River Basin in Hidalgo, Mexico, considering the reserve of minimum environmental flows. The water allocation scenarios take into account the water rights of each use in the basin, two allocation rules and three confidence levels (50, 70 and 90 %) of surface runoff. For the analyzed scenarios, it was confirmed that the requirements of only the public urban and livestock sectors are totally met, while agricultural, environmental, industrial and other multiple uses have different monthly and yearly deficits for the two allocation rules used. In normal conditions of water availability, runoffs in the basin are insufficient to cover the demand even when a minimum environmental flow is reserved. The highest annual deficit for environmental use occurs in the lower part of the basin, varying from 31 to 33 % for a scenario of light drought and 62 to 66 % for a scenario of severe drought.

Keywords : Environmental flow; flow duration curve; water rights; Tennant method; drought.

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