Impact of climate change on the hidrobiogeochemistry of two small tributary watersheds to Cantareira System in an area attended by a program of payment for environmental services

Abstract

This research proposal aims to provide a scientific evaluation of the results of a public policy of payments for ecosystem services (PES). Monitoring of two small watersheds has been established in the Extrema (MG) municipality, in headwater areas of the Cantareira System, which is the center of the discussions concerning the water crisis in São Paulo State. Our studies consider projected climate alterations and their respective changing scenarios as inputs to watershed simulation models used to evaluate the impacts to the hydrobiogeochemistry of these two small watersheds, and then checking scientifically some expected results regarding the hydrologic components of the PES mentioned above. In this way the water quality and quantity monitoring will be continued and enhanced by the project team, and the hydrological modeling will be applied at different scales to consider different agricultural practices, land use change, altered vegetation coverage of the Atlantic Forest, soils and topography, besides the climate behavior, regarding to hydrological and biogeochemical dynamic, to orient procedures related to environment management policies at the studied area and other similar ones. To achieve these goals, we defined the following objectives: (i) Enhanced an environmental database of the studied region; (ii) Establish a monitoring program at two sampling stations at the outlets of the studied watersheds to quantify the discharge and characterize the fluvial hydrobiogeochemistry, supported by complementary lab analysis; (iii) Apply AgES-W and MIKE SHE watershed models to evaluate the effects of land use change on the water resources quality and quantity, and simulate the combined effects of the project climate changes to guide the related public policies. (AU)