Modelos estocásticos para el pronóstico de sequías en la microcuenca del río Chulco en Ecuador

Abstract

Drought is a natural phenomenon that affects both ecosystems and people benefiting from various water services. Anticipate the occurrence of this phenomenon could help to plan and manage water resources in an appropriate way to reduce the negative impacts in urban, agricultural and energy sectors. This study aims to develop drought forecasts six months ahead through the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average models (ARIMA) and using the standardized precipitation index (SPI) in three time windows. To test the methodology, Chulco river basin was chosen located in Machángara-Paute-Santiago river system south of Ecuador. The results show that the best predictions were obtained for three months ahead when the SPI3 and SPI6 indices was used. This study could be useful for decision makers in watersheds regarding to plan policies and measures appropriate for the management of water resources in times of scarcity of water.