Ingeniería y Tecnología
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Item Nationwide potential groundwater recharge trends in Bolivia: a remote sensing approach and a policy-ready decline indicator(Environmental Research Letters, 2025-06-27) Guzmán Rojo, Mónica; Pérez Hurtado, César; Gómez Vargas, Zorel; Centro de Investigación Para el Desarrollo Sostenible del Oriente Boliviano, Universidad Católica Boliviana San Pablo, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia; Centro de Investigación y Transferencia para la Productividad Empresarial, Universidad Católica Boliviana San Pablo, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, BoliviaGroundwater provides global water security, supplying over half of the world’s drinking water. In Bolivia, it is particularly important for mitigating drought impacts and sustaining municipal supply. Yet national planning still lacks a clear picture of how groundwater recharge is changing. This study maps potential groundwater recharge change for all 338 municipalities from 1983 to 2022 and presents a policy-oriented risk indicator. Monthly precipitation (P), evapotranspiration (ET), and runoff (R) were obtained from TerraClimate (≈4 km) and FLDAS (≈10 km). A water-balance model converted these variables to potential groundwater recharge. Mann–Kendall and Theil–Sen statistics quantified long-term trends, and Pettitt’s test located years of abrupt change. The Annual Reduction of Potential Groundwater Recharge (RAPReHS) was derived to classify each municipality into one of five risk levels based on long-term groundwater recharge trends. Negative trends are significant in 65% of municipalities, and 71% record at least one breakpoint, most often between 2012 and 2015. Santa Cruz shows the steepest mean decline (–1.9 mm yr−1), yet similar losses occur along the Chapare–Yungas corridor of La Paz and Cochabamba, the southern lowlands of Beni, and the Chaco of Tarija. By contrast, Pando and parts of northern Beni retain near-neutral or slightly positive slopes, highlighting strong hydro-climatic heterogeneity. Spatial comparison between RAPReHS results and, deforestation and fire statistics reveals strong alignment. Municipalities in the ‘high’ and ‘severe’ classes spatially overlap with the main zones of primary forest loss recorded in Bolivia between 2000 and 2022. The RAPReHS framework, therefore, provides a reproducible, policy-ready lens through which to track groundwater as land-use pressures and climate variability intensify.Item Impacts of Wildfires on Groundwater Recharge: A Comprehensive Analysis of Processes, Methodological Challenges, and Research Opportunities(2024) Guzmán Rojo, Mónica; Fernandez, Jeanne; D’Abzac, Paul; Huysmans, Marijke; Department of Water and Climate, Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University; Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Exactas e Ingenierías, Universidad Católica Boliviana San Pablo, Cochabamba, Bolivia; Centro de Investigación para el Desarrollo Sostenible del Oriente Boliviano, Universidad Católica Boliviana San Pablo. Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Boliviancreasing wildfire activity has led to complex ecosystem consequences, with direct effects on the subsystems that affect the presence and movement of water. Although studies have inves- tigated the cascading effects of wildfires on the water balance, our understanding of broad-scale groundwater modifications post fire remains unclear. This review aims to elucidate fire-induced shifts in the water balance, their causal factors, and their potential effects on groundwater recharge. By scrutinizing prior research examples that modeled post-fire recharge scenarios, the review highlights persistent knowledge gaps. The challenge of quantifying and integrating fire-induced alterations in precipitation, wind, and land temperature patterns into recharge projection models is specifically addressed. Despite these gaps, post-fire values of hydrologically meaningful parameters such as leaf area index (LAI), curve number (CN), and near-surface saturated hydraulic conductivity (KST) have been identified. Simulating post-fire recharge via the extrapolation of these values requires the consideration of site-specific conditions, vegetation recovery, and ash removal. It frequently results in a reduced interception and increased surface runoff, while evapotranspiration remains dependent on site-specific factors and often dictates groundwater recharge estimates. Although post-fire recharge simulations are inherently complex and imprecise, their growing application can guide land-use alterations and support policy implementation that considers fire-induced water availability changes