Effect of Agricultural and Urban Infrastructure on River Basin Delineation and Surface Water Availability: Case of the Culiacan River Basin

River basin delineation can be inappropriate to determine surface water availability in a country, even if it is established by its water authority. This is because the effect of agricultural and urban infrastructure in runoff direction is ignored, and the anthropogenic changes in hydrography and topography features distort the runoff. This situation is really important because water rights are granted based on volumes that are not physically accessible. The existence of this problem is demonstrated through a case of study: the Culiacan River Basin in Mexico. To overcome such a situation, this study poses criteria to revise official river basin configurations and to delineate new river basins based on digital elevation models, vector files of agricultural infrastructure, and extensive field verification. Significant differences were noticed in surface water availability calculated under distinct river basin delineations.

Harmonization of digital elevation models and hydrographic network for basin delineation

The development of digital elevation models (DEM) and methods of its analysis expanded its application in various geographical researches, and for hydrological modeling in particular. In this paper we present a procedure of harmonizing DEM and hydrographic network for automated basin delineation at a small scale. It is shown that the harmonization procedure is a necessary step of hydrological modeling, the requirements to the harmonization procedure are defined, as well as minimum data set needed for reliable harmonization. This data set includes