Estimation of the phreatic aquifer recharge of Una watershed in Taubaté, SP

  • Jair Santoro Instituto Geológico do Estado de São Paulo
  • Helio Nóbile Diniz Instituto Geológico do Estado de São Paulo
  • Nathália Torras Correia Instituto Geológico do Estado de São Paulo
  • Felipe Rodrigues Carbone Instituto Geológico do Estado de São Paulo
  • Luciana Campos de Oliveira Sciotta Instituto Geológico do Estado de São Paulo

Abstract

This paper presents results related to the estimation of the phreatic aquifer recharge of the Una watershed in Taubaté, SP. The goal of this study was to develop public policies for the sustainable use of superficial and phreatic water at the Department of Agrarian Sciences of the University of Taubaté. The main results of this study are: determination of the soil physical indices, characterization of the textural profile, construction of piezometers, monitoring of the watertable, determination of the hydric climatological balance, and physic-chemical and bacteriological analyses of phreatic water. The geotechnical characterization showed that the soil have high total porosity (about 53%), and natural moisture of about 30%. Regarding the results of soil particle size measurements, it was observed that the deeper the soil the more uniform is the sediments texture distribution, varying from fine loamy, to coarse sandy. It is established a consistent relation between hydric balance and porosity, saturation and piezometric measurement in a daily historical series during one year. Methods and results allowed to calculate the phreatic aquifer discharge of several springs, that varied from 14.5 mm/day in the rainy period to 1.9 mm/day in other periods. The existence of faecal coliforms in phreatic aquifer, in variable amounts, showed that there are bacterias in the water infiltrated from septic cesspools or from the nearby Itaim River, contaminated by domestic sewage.

Published
25/06/2007
Section
Papers