Water availability under extreme events: droughts in the Paraná Basin region

Abstract

Natural disasters (droughts, floods, etc) have caused large human and financial losses globally. Recent droughts in southeast Brazil revealed how important are the strategies to mitigate such extreme events. A prerequisite to anticipate the potential impacts of future droughts is to understand past droughts by characterizing them temporal and spatially. The objective of this post doctoral project is to assess the water availability under stressed situations caused by droughts in the Paraná hydrographic region. To this end, the proposed analyses seek to (i) understand how the meteorological droughts propagate through the hydrological system; (ii) quantify the impacts on the hydrological processes and (iii) water budget. This assessment will be based on remote sensing, ground-based monitoring data, and modelling data from global land data assimilation models. At the end of this study, I hope to map the spatial-temporal impacts of droughts on main hydrological components; identify the most sensitive areas to droughts; and produce information to assist in the spatial management of surface and groundwater resources. In summary, the following question should be answered: How much and where will the surface and groundwater be available under drought conditions within the Paraná basin? I also hope to publish the results from this research in high-impact international scientific journals. (AU)