ABSTRACT Land-use changes promote significant variations in streamflow regimes, and hydrological models allow studying their impacts. Based on this approach, this study aimed to assess the applicability of the SWAT model for different land-use scenarios and their respective impacts on the flow regime of the Mucuri River. The average monthly and daily water balance was generated after the calibration and validation of the SWAT model in the basin. Three land-use scenarios were analyzed in relation to the current land use, as follows: replacement of the agricultural area by the eucalyptus crop, replacement of the native forest area by the sugarcane crop, and replacement of pasture by exposed soil. The results showed that the SWAT model is adequate to simulate the land-use change and its impact on the flow regime of the Mucuri River; the replacement of agriculture by eucalyptus in the basin led to a decrease in the average and minimum reference streamflows; and the replacement of the forest cover by sugarcane and pasture by exposed soil provided an increase in the average and minimum reference streamflows.

ABSTRACT Hydrological models are becoming more and more widespread, mainly due to their capacity to simulate the impact of environmental changes on water resources. In this way, the aim of this study was to calibrate and validate the SWAT model for the soil and climatic conditions of the Mucuri River Basin, located in the Northeast region of the States of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The SWAT-CUP software module SUFI2 was used to analyze the sensitivity, calibration and validation of the model. The calibration was performed in an intermediate fluviometric station and the validation in five other located: three upstream, one downstream and one independent from the calibration point. It was evidenced for the study area that the parameters referring to the basic flow processes were more sensitive. The model obtained a good adjustment with an overestimate tendency of 15%. In general, the SWAT model, using SWAT-CUP was good and adequate in terms of its calibration performance and validation of the flow simulation in the Mucuri River Basin by the determination coefficients, Nash-Suttclife efficiency and percentage of trend.

A espacialização de variáveis climáticas, notadamente a precipitação pluvial, necessita de estudos constantes, visando ao aperfeiçoamento de interpoladores e desenvolvimento de mapas sem tendência. Objetivou-se, neste contexto, avaliar o desempenho dos interpoladores krigagem (KG), a partir do melhor modelo de semivariograma, cokrigagem (CA), introduzindo a altitude como variável secundária, modelagem estatística (ME), na qual a precipitação média pode ser estimada a partir de coordenadas geográficas, e inverso do quadrado da distância (IQD), para espacialização da precipitação média mensal, precipitação média do período seco e precipitação média anual, em Minas Gerais; para isto se utilizaram informações de 232 postos pluviométricos para modelagem e de 70 para validação, com base no erro médio absoluto, além de um modelo digital de elevação com resolução de 270 m. Quanto à avaliação dos métodos de interpolação, constatou-se bom desempenho das metodologias abordadas, com erro absoluto médio variando de 12,84 a 19,96%, com destaque para a cokrigagem, que obteve menor erro em 50% das situações analisadas.

The mapping of weather elements, especially rainfall, needs constant studies to improve the performance of interpolators, and to obtain unbiased maps. This work aimed to evaluate the performance of some spatial interpolators for mean monthly rainfall, mean rainfall during the dry season and mean annual rainfall in the Minas Gerais State. For that, the ordinary kriging was evaluated and compared, after the semi-variogram modeling, co-kriging (introducing the altitude above sea level as a secondary variable), statistical modeling in which the mean precipitation can be estimated from geographical coordinates, and inverse square distance. In this study, data sets were evaluated from 232 pluviometric stations, in the Minas Gerais area, to apply each one of the interpolators mentioned and 70 stations to evaluate the performance that was conducted on the basis of absolute mean error. In addition, a digital elevation model, with a resolution of 270 m, was applied. The interpolators have shown good performance, with mean errors varying from 12.84 to 19.96%, the co-kriging method presenting a smaller absolute mean error in 50% of the situations evaluated.