The Water Resources and Environment Laboratory, which is part of the Civil Engineering Program, was created in 2010 with a view to adopting a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to training future scientific leaders in the field of water resources. In tune with social demands, the Laboratory works with undergraduate students (Tutorial Education Program – PET/MEC-SESu – CAPES support and PIBIC Program – CNPq support) and postgraduate students (master’s and doctorate), placing great emphasis on the emerging issue of integrated watershed management.

The formation of the new Laboratory brings together and integrates the Laboratories that have historically developed alongside the Civil Engineering Program at COPPE/UFRJ, namely: Tracers Laboratory (1972); Hydrology Laboratory (1987) and Computational Hydraulics Laboratory (1998).

The main mission of the Water Resources and Environment Laboratory is to build a database and develop analysis tools that can be integrated into a decision support system for water resources management, supported by environmental modeling and hydro-meteorological and global climate change monitoring at the basin scale.

Strategic Guidelines

The laboratory’s strategy is guided by academic-scientific axes that are worth highlighting:

1. Surface and underground hydrology

2. Surface-atmosphere interactions, micrometeorology and mesoscale hydrometeorology

3. Water, air and soil quality

4. River hydraulics

5. Sediment transport

6. Hydraulic structures

7. Hydrometry

8. Application of tracers in hydrology

9. Environmental modeling and water resource management in rural and urban watersheds

10. Global climate change and its regional effects

These themes encourage the development of remote sensing and geophysical techniques, with the aim of making up for the lack of data and helping to solve problems related to Brazilian river basins. One example of this is the quest to improve the quality, reduce the costs and optimize the acquisition time of basic hydrological data. This is essential for forecasting, control and action strategies during droughts and floods, as well as enabling estimates of the impacts of climate change on the hydrological cycle, river regimes and the identification of hydrological risks and measures to adapt to new environmental conditions.

Scientific questions

The laboratory seeks to answer fundamental scientific questions such as:

• What factors affect the interannual variability of surface and underground runoff in river basins?

• How do temporal and spatial patterns of soil moisture influence energy and water balances and runoff variability?

• How to determine the uncertainties in hydrological model flows based on spatio-temporal rainfall fields?

• How to model and integrate water quantity and quality patterns in river basins and estuarine and coastal environments?

Study Programs

To address these issues, LABH2O is developing three main study programs:

1. Program 1 – Environmental modeling and integrated management of water resources in rural and urban basins

   This program focuses on the importance of computer modeling in quantifying key variables for the decision-making process. The integration of model results with management systems, considering the integrated analysis of environmental and social risks and impacts, is central. Themes include climate change, aquifer vulnerability, contamination of water resources and the use of fluorescent tracers to study the dispersion of pollutants.

2. Program 2 – Spatial hydrology and remote sensing as a source of data for computer modeling

   This program explores the use of automatic and remote sensing platforms as direct sources of hydrological data or as inputs to hydrological, hydrodynamic and water quality models. The focus is on the development of integrated information technologies, including digital cartography, to support the management and modeling of water resources and the environment.

3. Program 3 – Hydrological-hydraulic-atmospheric and water quality modeling

   Numerical modeling is the basis of this program, with the intention of integrating hydrological, hydraulic, atmospheric and geomorphological processes on different space-time scales. The creation of integrated, environmentally and socially sustainable models is one of the main objectives of this line of research.

Projects

The laboratory carries out projects in various watersheds, both rural and urban, at different scales, including:

• Paraíba do Sul River Basin

• Rural and urban basins in the state of Rio de Janeiro

• Amazon Basin

• Cuiabá River Basin

• São Francisco River Basin

These projects aim to build and disseminate knowledge about the proper management of river basins, with partnerships between academic, scientific and operational institutions and society. One of the main projects is the study of the experimental basin of the Piabanha River, located in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro (EIBEX), a tributary of the Paraíba do Sul River. This basin, with its Atlantic Forest biomes, agricultural and urban areas, serves as a full-scale laboratory for the development of new scientific methodologies and technological innovations.