Abstract

BARRANTES BARRANTES, Edwin Alberto  and  MENDEZ ESTRADA, Víctor Hugo. Wealth of water resources and its relation to vegetation cover in the Forest Reserve Greece, Alajuela, Costa Rica. Cuadernos de Investigación UNED [online]. 2016, vol.8, n.1, pp.8-12. ISSN 1659-4266.  http://dx.doi.org/10.22458/urj.v8i1.1215.

Ecosystems provide various environmental services such as key recharge and flow of the water resource, but they can be damaged by human activity. Understanding vegetation cover allows administrators to predict the effects of such changes on groundwater and the actions needed in administration. Grecia Forest Reserve is a 2000-hectare zone in Costa Rica that affects eleven settlements in the region. There we measured vegetation cover and water volume in all water springs (N=70). We identified four vegetation groups: secondary forest, scrubland, pasture and pine forest; and an overall mean flow of 1,12 l/s/ha. Most water springs were found in secondary forest, which had the highest vegetation cover; however, scrublands had higher flows.

Keywords : Nascent; recharge zon; aquifers; gauging; volumetric system; land use.

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