Modelling the water balance in the glacierized Parón Lake basin (White Cordillera, Peru)

• Autores: Suarez, Wilson, Chevallier, P., Pouyaud, B., López, P.
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2008
• Institución: Servicio Nacional de Meteorología e Hidrología del Perú
• Repositorio: SENAMHI-Institucional
• Lenguaje: inglés
• OAI Identifier: oai:repositorio.senamhi.gob.pe:20.500.12542/52
• Enlace del recurso: http://repositorio.senamhi.gob.pe/handle/20.500.12542/52; https://doi.org/10.1623/hysj.53.1.266; https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12542/52
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: Glaciares; Peru; Snow melting line; Tropical glacier; Water balance; Water resource; https://purl.org/pe-repo/ocde/ford#1.05.11; gestion de recursos hidricos de cuenca - Agua

The White Cordillera (northern Peru), with a glacial surface of 631 km2, is the largest glacierized mountain range in the Tropics. Due to the lack of physical data from most of its sub-basins, it is difficult to build a physical model to estimate the water resource flowing from the glaciers at the present time and a fortiori for the future. The most recent GCM simulations indicate a significant increase in the temperature and an accelerated shrinking of the glaciers. Consequently, we sought a model that would be based on the data available within instrumented sub-basins. A theoretical/conceptual water model makes it possible to quantify the local glacier contribution, which could then be applied to the other non-instrumented sub-basins. A total of 43.6% of Parón Lake's instrumented sub-basin area (47.4 km2) corresponds to glacial surfaces. Within this sub-basin, a smaller watershed (8.8 km2), called Artesón, with 72.9% glacierized area, has been accurately observed over a 5-year hydrological period (September 2000-August 2005). This information allowed us to calibrate the model over the Artesón sub-basin. The parameters obtained were applied to the entire Parón basin using the same modelling approach.