Avaliação das alterações antrópicas e seus impactos no ciclo hidrológico na zona urbana de Parauapebas

Abstract

The city of Parauapebas was the scene of a vertiginous demographic growth driven by diverse economic cycles of the region. Accelerated and uncontrolled growth leads to a series of urban problems and unbalances the hydrological cycle, which can lead to water shortages for human consumption. In this context it is necessary to understand how the intrinsic aspects of the urban expansion affected the hydrological cycle in the city of Parauapebas. Therefore, a series of databases and works previously developed in the region were used to evaluate the diverse faces of the urban expansion and its consequences in the aquifer. The decrease of green areas in the order of more than 110 km² along the urban expansion already shows consequences in the microclimate of the region besides generating zones of weakness in the soil that entail in slides and formation of gullies. The waterproofing of large areas decreases the water infiltration capacity, causing changes in the aquifer dynamics. Constant topographic changes such as hill cutting cause variations in wind directions by modifying the dynamics of rainfall in the region, while drainage overwhelm has led to a series of flooding even with the decrease in rainfall over the last decades. The need to implement a system for the monitoring and management of water resources is indispensable to reduce or even reverse the effects of urban expansion on the hydrological cycle.