Mejoramiento de la gestión integrada del recurso hídrico en la cuenca del río Tempisque mediante la determinación del caudal ambiental bajo una perspectiva holística

Until recently, there was no need to study in depth the requirements of environmental flow within the national framework for granting concessions. However, approximately in the last 25 years, that vision has changed for multiple reasons, one of them being the change and intensity of land uses that have drastically increased the demand for water, and consequently have caused the urgency to meet concession requests from an integrated water resource management point of view. This project responds precisely to the country's need to have one or more methodologies for calculating environmental flows in its rivers, especially when conflicts over water use have increased between communities, companies, and environmental groups. In this proposal, the third stage of the research route is completed, where a holistic methodology previously selected in the Tempisque River basin will be validated. This basin represents an ideal option for this study, both for its climatic conditions and for the large amount of water use along its riverbed, that is, when conducting this research, results would be obtained for a complex and high-impact socioeconomic scenario that could be applied to other rivers in the country. Prior to this project, two

investigations have been carried out on other existing methodologies at an international level. In one, a hydrological methodology was validated for a pilot basin: the subbasin of the Birrís River; and in another, a hydrobiological methodology was tested for the subbasin of the Pejibaye River. On this occasion, the proposal aims to advance the research route and raise the level of complexity by applying a holistic methodology in the Tempisque River basin, where the hydrological, biological, and sociocultural components are integrated. The main expected result of this project is a validated methodology for determining environmental flow that contributes to the management currently operated by the government of Costa Rica

Determinar el régimen de caudal ambiental del río Tempisque bajo un enfoque holístico, para asegurar el aprovechamiento sostenible del recurso hídrico.

Escuela de Ingeniería Agrícola: Línea de investigación en Manejo y Conservación de los Recursos Agua y Suelo