Drought propagation in the water-scarce northeast of Brazil: societal response to spatio-temporal dynamics of water storage
Abstract
Sociohydrology attempts to understand how water availability and its temporal dynamics might influence human behavior and decisions. The northeastern region of Brazil, especially the state of Ceará, is characterized by a semi-arid climate and has been historically known to suffer from severe socioeconomical impacts from droughts. Traditionally, governmental response has been to build reservoirs to balance the supply-demand dynamics and mitigate hydrological and social effects during dry periods. Not only that, but the population itself is also responsible for expanding the reservoir network by independently building reservoirs based on its empirical knowledge of the hydrology within that region. The Upper Jaguaribe basin (UJB), in the state of Ceará, Brazil, exemplifies the typical sociohydrological dynamics of the Brazilian semi-arid regions, and has experienced an intense growth of its reservoir network over the last 100 years. In this context, the objectives of this study are: 1) to develop a modeling strategy that dynamically incorporates, over a 100 years (1920 and 2020) time span, the effect of increasing human intervention, as seen by the progression in dam construction over the years; 2) conduct an empirical analysis on how human cultural values were shaped by hydrology in that region and 3) investigate the propagation of droughts in the system over the 100 years span, as it transitioned from a low to a high density of surface reservoirs.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021AGUFMSY55D0388P