Coupling land-use and water resources planning: hydric availability as a locational criterion

ABSTRACT:

Availability of water resources is increasingly lower, considering the amount and quality. There is a need of recovering this availability, focusing on the planning process on demand's management. The present paper presents a methodological approach that allows the evaluation of water resources' availability in a context of territorial planning as a way to assess the compatibility between the development needs and environmental answers. This paper intends to promote a discussion on the need to include, in the early stages of the decision-making process, an evaluation on the supplying capacity of water resources to the demands arising from the territorial development. The approach showed a promising potential to support the planning process, including water resources planning. By doing so, planning processes are potentially benefited, once decision-makers will be able to find a more suitable decision, which recognizes that the assessment of water resources' carrying capacity plays a major role during the planning process.

Keywords:
water resources planning; environmental zoning; environmental management