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  4. Seasonal water storage and release dynamics of bofedal wetlands in the Central Andes
 
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Seasonal water storage and release dynamics of bofedal wetlands in the Central Andes
File(s)
Hydrological Processes - 2023 - Ross.pdf (10.2 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Ross, Anthony
Martinez Mendoza, Marc
Drenkhan, Fabian
Montoya, Nilton
Jan R., Baiker
more
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Tropical high-Andean wetlands, locally known as ‘bofedales’, are key ecosystems sustaining biodiversity, carbon sequestration, water provision and livestock farming. Bofedales' contribution to dry season baseflows and sustaining water quality is crucial for downstream water security. The sensitivity of bofedales to climatic and anthropogenic disturbances is therefore of growing concern for watershed management. This study aims to understand seasonal water storage and release characteristics of bofedales by combining remote sensing analysis and ground-based monitoring for the wet and dry seasons of late 2019 to early 2021, using the glacierised Vilcanota-Urubamba basin (Southern Peru) as a case study. A network of five ultrasound loggers was installed to obtain discharge and water table data from bofedal sites across two headwater catchments. The seasonal extent of bofedales was mapped by applying a supervised machine learning model using Random Forest on imagery from Sentinel-2 and NASADEM. We identified high seasonal variability in bofedal area with a total of 3.5% and 10.6% of each catchment area, respectively, at the end of the dry season (2020), which increased to 15.1% and 16.9%, respectively, at the end of the following wet season (2021). The hydrological observations and bofedal maps were combined into a hydrological conceptual model to estimate the storage and release characteristics of the bofedales, and their contribution to runoff at the catchment scale. Estimated lag times between 1 and 32 days indicate a prolonged bofedal flow contribution throughout the dry season (about 74% of total flow). Thus, our results suggest that bofedales provide substantial contribution to dry season baseflow, water flow regulation and storage. These findings highlight the importance of including bofedales in local water management strategies and adaptation interventions including nature-based solutions that seek to support long-term water security in seasonally dry and rapidly changing Andean catchments.
Date Issued
2023-08
Date Acceptance
2023-06-30
Citation
Hydrological Processes, 2023, 37 (8), pp.1-14
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/105781
URL
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hyp.14940
DOI
https://www.dx.doi.org/10.1002/hyp.14940
ISSN
0885-6087
Publisher
Wiley
Start Page
1
End Page
14
Journal / Book Title
Hydrological Processes
Volume
37
Issue
8
Copyright Statement
© 2023 The Authors. Hydrological Processes published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Identifier
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hyp.14940
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
e14940
Date Publish Online
2023-08-04
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