Study of the relationship between rainfall, runoff and land use in five watersheds. Drought and impacts on the landscape system

• Author(s): Tangarrinha, Luís Miguel Custódio
• Date: 2016
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/12962
• Origin: Repositório da UTL
• Subject(s): watershed; drought; land use; Thornthwaite-Mather; landscape ecology
• Document Type: Master thesis
• Language: English
• Advisor(s): Rego, Francisco Castro
• Contributor(s): Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa

Description

Mestrado em Arquitetura Paisagista - Instituto Superior de Agronomia - UL

The amount of water generated from a watershed depends on the climate, soils, geology, vegetation and land use. Water inputs of precipitation as rain are divided by watershed in the evapotranspiration, runoff and groundwater recharge. This study examined the factors that can affect the runoff of Portuguese watersheds, focusing on factors related to land and watershed management. For this analysis, a methodology developed by Thornthwaite-Mather was used to compute streamflow with the input of precipitation and temperature obtained by Portuguese Meteorology Services. These data were compared with the observed values in order to be able to calculate soil properties, in this case, the values of coefficient of reservoir and available water content. These values are possibly related to changes in the composition of the soil and were compared with the values of land use for periods studied based on CORINE methodology (1970 to 2006). The existence of periods of drought, calculated with SPI-12months and their impacts were also compared with changes in soil and land use. These processes are the main steps for understanding the changes that affect all these systems. These changes are important for the planning future landscape management