Determinación del caudal ambiental para el mejoramiento de la gestión integrada del recurso hídrico en el río Sarapiquí mediante una metodología holística

Water is an essential resource for life, however, aquatic ecosystems have suffered degradation and
overexploitation that provokes environmental flow reduction which is necessary to maintain the ecological
services for communities and organisms. Our country does not possess a proper strategy to grant water
concessions, despite the great diversity of aquatic ecosystems that we own. It is necessary to adjudge
concession requests from an integrated water resource management point of view, this research proposal
responds precisely to the country's need to have one or more methodologies for estimation of the
environmental flow in its rivers, especially when conflicts over water use have increased between communities,
companies, and environmental groups. In this research proposal a holistic methodology but incorporating water
quality variable will be validated in the Sarapiquí River, this basin represents an ideal option for this study,
because of its climatic conditions, and for the large amount of water uses along its riverbed (tourism,
conservation, agricultural, recreation, among others). We aim to obtain results for a complex and high-impact
socio-economic scenario that could be applied to other rivers in the country, and also could be compare with
the results obtained from previous projects. On this occasion, the proposal aims to advance the research route
increasing the level of complexity by incorporating water quality variables, to integrating to the hydrological,
biological, and sociocultural components. The main expected result of this project is a validated methodology
for the determination of environmental flow that serves as a contribution to the management currently operated
by the government of Costa Rica.

Determinar el régimen de caudal ambiental del río Sarapiquí mediante una metodología holística, para asegurar la gestión sostenible
del recurso hídrico en consideración de su disponibilidad, calidad, usos ecosistémicos y sociales.

1. Escuela de Ingeniería Agrícola: Línea de investigación en Manejo y Conservación de los Recursos Agua y Suelo
2. Escuela de Biología: Biotecnología Ambienta