Impact of changes in average temperature and land cover on components of the water balance in the Teatinos River basin, Páramo Rabanal, Colombia

Abstract

In the national context, there are studies that confirm that the change in the average temperature in the Colombian páramos motivates the expansion of the agricultural frontier and expansive livestock farming and violates the ecosystem services of the hydrographic basins. Therefore, in the present study the effect of climate change on the change in land cover and various components of the water balance of the River Teatinos basin of the Rabanal páramo was evaluated, which is important from the point of view of biodiversity and water supply for the city of Tunja. This evaluation was carried out with the construction of the distributed water balance where the real evapotranspiration was identified depending on the vegetation cover that were characterised through remote sensing tools. The climatic analysis indicates that the increase in temperature explains 62% of the increase in evapotranspiration and the registered increase in rainfall explains 47.2% of the advance in forest cover. The advance of the forest cover (open and gallery forest) generates the contraction of the páramo grass cover. The 75%-reduction in the area of páramo coverage is explained by the expansion of the forest. It was obtained that the crop cover did not have a significant change. In relation to the impact on water availability, no significant change is observed because the increase in precipitation is offset by an increase in evapotranspiration, indicating possible mechanisms of resilience of the hydrographic basin to the phenomenon of global climate change.

Keywords

• climate change
• ecosystem service
• moor
• remote sensing
• vegetation cover
• water availability