Impact of Urban Expansion on Superficial Water Quality in Periurban Areas

Abstract

Economic growth promoted by large investment projects in the city of Seropédica and surrounding areas is not accompanied by a territorial planning that supports future growth scenarios. The challenge of the municipality is to prepare to have its territory fully transformed. This study aimed to establish quantitative data on the interferences that the growth model practiced has caused in its main watercourse called Val?o dos Bois. For this, its morphometric characteristics and physicochemical parameters of water quality were measured, and computational simulations of the self-purification processes were performed at various points, as well as the infiltration and precipitation processes, surface flow and leaching in four occupation scenarios of the urbanized areas of the basin, for rains with five different return periods.