Historic Variability of the Water Inflow to the Lazaro Cardenas Dam and Water Allocation in the Irrigation District 017, Comarca Lagunera, Mexico

Abstract

An assemblage of tree-ring chronologies for the Nazas (NZW) in the Western Sierra Madre (WSM), Mexico was developed to determine water inflow at the Lazaro Cardenas Dam (LCD), the main source of water for surface irrigation in the Irrigation District 017 (DDR 017), Comarca Lagunera. A Principal Component Analysis of the ring-width chronologies was conducted to determine a common climate signal, and a stepwise model based on selected chronologies of the PC1 (CBA, COC) and PC2 (ARN) were used to develop a water inflow reconstruction to the Lazaro Cardenas Dam (LCD) extending from 1753 to 2003 (251 years), resulting in the following significant findings: the warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the winter-spring season had a significant influence (SOI; Dec–Feb = −0.24, p p 6 m3, where the maximum annual water outflow allowed of 1100 × 106 m3 for safety reasons, the dam infrastructure was released in 74% of the years and increasing to 78% when considering the reconstructed inflow. Prolonged drought episodes lasting more than 10 consecutive years were detected in the reconstructed inflow, information that could be used by decision makers to establish proper irrigation management strategies to ameliorate the economic and social impact when these extreme hydroclimatic events may occur.

Keywords

• Nazas watershed
• tree-rings
• runoff
• inflow
• outflow
• ENSO