Climatological water balance and study of water availability in the Santa Cruz dam reservoir for the municipality of Guanhães/MG - Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Rodrigues, Andre Leal
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Mesquita, Elisa de Pinho Barroso, Queiroz, Tadeu de Miranda
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Research, Society and Development
• Texto Completo: https://rsdjournal.org/index.php/rsd/article/view/29238
• topic: Crisis del agua; Abastecimiento público; Guanhães.; Water crisis; Public supply; Guanhães.; Crise Hídrica; Abastecimento público; Guanhães.

The whole world has presented frequent situations of water crises due to the mismanagement of natural resources. The climatological water balance (BHC) is one of the ways to monitor the storage of water in the soil, being an essential tool in the planning and management of water resources. Given this scenario, the objective of the work was to study the climatological water balance (BHC) of the city of Guanhães/MG and relate the water deficit found with the study of water availability in the reservoir of the Santa Cruz dam, to supply the demand in the period of water scarcity in the municipality. For modeling the BHC the methodology proposed by Thornthwaite and Mather was used. Three scenarios of the city's public supply during a dry period were evaluated, one scenario considering the entire supply only using the volume available in the reservoir, a scenario considering the reservoir volume and the use of deep tubular wells for daily use and a scenario considering supply with the volume of the reservoir, use of deep tube wells for daily use and deep tube wells for emergency uses. As a main result, it was found that the most critical months of water availability in the city are the months of June, July, August and September, where it was possible to observe the greatest water deficits. The reservoir built to increase water in critical periods, together with the daily and emergency deep tubular wells, are not enough to fully mitigate the municipality's water deficit in the four months of drought. Therefore, it is recommended that municipal managers study new alternatives to increase water availability and that the population save water in the dry months for joint collaboration in order to mitigate the effects of the drought period.