Some components of the water cycle in La Pampa province, Argentina

O. E. SCARPATI; ALBERTO D. CAPRIOLO

Congreso; Water Sustainability in the XXI Century: Challenges and Solutions; 2017

This paper studies the variability of some components of the water cycle and its relationship with agricultural development in La Pampa province.The surface of the area is 143,440 km2. Its climate is continental and present three zones: dry sub humid, semiarid and arid according the Hidric Index of Thornthwaite classification studied by Forte Lay et al. (1992).The precipitation showed different cycles and so on the agriculture frontier in the province. During the last decades the summer crops increased their surface and yields.The precipitation increase during the last decades has occurred in a broad dry and semi-arid sub-humid region of Argentina, having its greatest intensity in the northeast of the province of La Pampa. The precipitations trend is increasing, especially in the warm semester.In spite of this growing trend, sometimes there are droughts that, depending on their intensity and zonal duration, cause losses in the yields of the fine harvest and important delays in the sowing of the coarse harvest. These episodes do not imply a trend change, but a variability of the normal conditions, very common in the meteorological elements.