Incertidumbre en la precipitación espacial diaria causada por redes pluviográficas dispersas en una microcuenca de páramo densamente monitoreada

Abstract

Uncertainty in areal rainfallestimation has direct implications for water resource management. Especially in mountain catchments, where variability is high and monitoring is often scarce. This is particularly true for the Páramo, a mountain ecosystem that provides water to millions of people in the Andean region. In this study, the uncertainty in daily precipitation estimation of a páramomicrocatchmentis quantified. Recordsfrom a monitoring network with an unprecedentednumber of sensors in the region were used (13 sensors, approximately 1 per 0.6km2). Two sources of uncertainty were analyzed: 1) the effect of interpolation method; and 2) the impact of reducing sensordensity. Through Ordinary Kriging and IDW methods, best daily estimates were obtained and compared with all possible estimates obtained by discarding tipping buckets. For 25% of the days, none of the methods reflected the variability inside the microcatchment. In the remaining days, both methods performed well. For all sensor densities, between 20% and 30% of all gauge networks estimated the mean daily areal precipitation without bias. When the sensor density decreased,the mean daily absolute error increased exponentially. All instances of the study revealed that the uncertainty in estimating rainfall insidethe microcatchment could be critical for further purposes.