Author(s): H. Carmona; A. Marquez
Linked Author(s): Andrés Humberto Otálora Carmona
Keywords: Extreme rainfalls; Flood; Statistical modeling; Climate change
Abstract: This paper provides a characterization of the extreme events in Tocuyo river basin, Venezuela, Which covers an area of17,676 km2, with a population of over 600,000 peoples, has an average annual discharge of 28.6 m3/s. As the only country basin that drains to the Caribbean Sea, having an Andean origin and born in the mountain of Cendéof the Andean foothills to 3652 m, south of Lara state in western Venezuela. Periodically during the last months of the year corresponding to the rainy season in this basin, heavy precipitation occur in both states and multiply the average flow of the river turning into giant dangerous flooding large areas, affecting everybody and causing serious losses economic, the most serious of these floods occurred recently in December 2010, on the other hand in 2011 and 2012, were also rainy and caused flooding of the river. Methodology and results: Analysis of rainfall series observed in 14 stations for the 1950-2008, and other data source from2000-2008, show decreasing trend in rainfall for different locations as is prognosticated by climate change. Also is demonstrated that the orographic rainfall is not decisive in the formation of precipitation in this basin. However, in floods of 2011 and 2012, the national government approved more than 60 millions of US$, as resources for recovery and environmental sanitation of the east coast of Falcon state, for flood control works that ranged from the sanitation and rectification of riverbed, to the environmental recovery of the areas affected by the floods; works of flood protection, retaining walls, drainage and recovery Tocuyo River, like rivers Tucurere, Dressing up Matícora, on the west coast. Similarly, the plan would provide for investment in emergency of 2011, all the dredging and cleaning up the east coast of Falcon, the construction of drainage in the San Juan-Sanare axis-Chichiriviche, wastewater treatment, . Remarkably, in the issue of dredging is necessary to carefully evaluate the environmental impacts.
Year: 2014