FRAGILIDADE AMBIENTAL POTENCIAL DA BACIA HIDROGRÁFICA DO RIO CASTÁN, ESTADO TRUJILLO - VENEZUELA

Abstract

The Castán river basin located in the Trujillo state - Venezuela is the only source of water for all the activities carried out in the state capital and in the surrounding regions;the main idea of this paper was model the different levels of potential environmental fragility in the aforementioned geographic space.Initially, thematic mappings of slope, distance to drainage, soil and annual mean precipitation were performed; Subsequently, the methodology of Multicriteria Analysis was used, through the Hierarchical Analysis Process to determine the importance of the criteria and obtain the index and consistency ratio of the matrix, and finally, an overlap of the layers in the GIS was performed of Weighted Linear Combination. Five levels of potential environmental fragility were obtained: Very low (3%), Low (22%), Moderate (36%) High (29%) and Very High (10%). The High and Very High summed classes represent the largest extension of the basin area, taking into account such fragility characteristics to elaborate development plans and environmental balance of the basin.