DEFINIÇÃO DE REGIÕES HIDROLOGICAMENTE HOMOGÊNEAS A PARTIR DE TÉCNICAS DE ESTATÍSTICA MULTIVARIADA NA BACIA HIDROGRÁFICA DO RIO ITAPICURU - BA COM BASE EM DADOS FÍSICO-CLIMÁTICOS E DE SENSORIAMENTO REMOTO

Abstract

Few information about fluviometric related to the time-space inconsistency of historical data available has resulted in great restriction to represent the dynamics of water resources in hydrological studies, especially the flow rates. In this context, methodologies to estimate the flow in places without monitoring are searched. Thus, the objective of this work was to identify hydrologically homogeneous regions in the Itapicuru River Basin (BRI), located in the northeast of the State of Bahia, through the cluster analysis technique, using the hierarchical hybrid k-means clustering method, using the distance as similarity measure from physical-climatic and relief variables. Three hydrologically homogeneous regions were defined in the proposed watershed based on the explanatory variables: precipitation, evapotranspiration, precipitation-evapotranspiration ratio, area and normalized difference vegetation index - NDVI. The algorithm of the proposed method proved to be efficient for the used data grouping, where it was possible to find the characteristics of each cluster formed, without overlapping data in the intervals of the analyzed variables. Finally, these regions will support the regionalization studies and contribute to the planning and management of water resources.