Estimativa da recarga de aquíferos para gestão de águas superficiais e subterrâneas: aplicação em uma área urbana costeira.

Abstract

Urban coastal regions usually suffer from serious problems related to, among other factors: inadequate land use, low topographic gradient and shallow aquifers. It is widely known that these regions present high population density and the water resources problems tend to increase in time. Several studies show that the most feasible solution for these problems is the appropriate and integrated management of surface and groundwater. This dissertation aims at implementing a distributed soil water balance model able to estimate the aquifer recharge in urban coastal regions. For this purpose, a flooding-prone urban area was investigated, integrating this study with previous ones in the same area. The methodology applied in this research integrates the soil water balance model to a groundwater flow model, previously calibrated for the region, comparing the aquifer water levels calculated by the models with observed ones. The end-line purpose of this work is to lower the aquifer water levels, using information from rainfall forecasts, within safe limits and no risks of saline intrusion. A Geographic Information Systems was applied to the parameterization of the distributed model. The validation of the aquifer recharge model was implemented by comparing the simulated and observed aquifer water levels from observed rainfall data. The results showed a good agreement between observations and simulations, thus concluding that the recharge model is appropriate for the studied area.