Proyecto Uno, Zona Poniente, Zacatecas

Derek Lounsbury and Jaron Brown

Objective:

Build a hydrologic model of the runoff for two basins in the western part of the city of Zacatecas, where urban growth has caused a change in land use. The effects of this land use change on runoff are unknown and need to be studied.

Description:

Zacatecas, as capital city of the State of Zacatecas, in recent years has grown considerably due to its economic, political, and social status within the State. By current growth rates, the area west of Zacatecas will experience tremendous growth between 2004 and 2030, and this growth has led to a large increase in the civil infrastructure; this change of land from natural or agricultural use has important ramifications on the geophysical nature of watershed and the resulting runoff. In order to understand and quantify these effects on the runoff, hydrologic studies of the situation are needed, and a comparative analysis of future and current conditions will take place.

Steps:

• Acquire digital maps of terrain, elevation, land use, soil type, etc…
• Obtain precipitation data to define design storms (IDF Curves, etc…)
• Delineate the basins in question and obtain geometric and geomorphologic parameters
• Model the runoff within the drainage systems using current and future conditions and compare the two
• Quantify hydrographs and peak discharges, and find the temporal and spatial distributions within the basins for storms of differing return periods.
• Analytical comparisons for the results of the models

	Schedule
Task		Date	Status
Delineate watershed		12 Feb	Done
Find rainfall data		12 Feb
Obtain other pertinent maps (soil type, land use, region to be developed)		19 Feb
Put it all together		5 Mar
Presentable product		12 Mar
Take it to Mexico		16 Mar

Potential Problems:

Difficulty finding data, synthesis of material, future developed areas

Areas to Develop within the project

• Create IDF curves
• Quantify hydrographs