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COURSE INFO PROVIDER: SWSPCP Webinar
COURSE TITLE: Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta hydro-sedimentological model, a tool for recovery and management

INSTRUCTORS Constanza Ricaurte-Villota, PhD

COURSE DESCRIPTION Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta hydro-sedimentological model, a tool for recovery and management

Constanza Ricaurte-Villota, PhD
March 23, 2022

ABSTRACT:
The Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta complex (CGSM) is considered one of the most productive ecosystems in the Colombian Caribbean. It is one of the largest coastal wetlands in Latin America, including both coral reefs and mangroves and is an area of special interest for the country. It is supplied with freshwater from the east by rivers descending from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; and to the west, it is connected to the Magdalena River by several channels. Historically, it has suffered many anthropogenic alterations such as deforestation, interruption of water flow by road construction, reduced water availability and water use conflicts, canal and river modifications, livestock, and agricultural crops, increasing disasters such as droughts, hypersalinization of its marshes, mangroves, and coastal lagoons. In order to take measures that contribute to recovery and management, efforts have been made to understand the dynamics of the ecosystem in a comprehensive manner. In this sense, since 2018, the design and implementation of the hydro-sedimentological model began, which allows simulating variations in the volume of the main bodies of water, taking into account the natural seasonality of the water supply of the different tributaries of the region and the effects that anomalies such as ENSO (El niño- La niña events) may have, in addition to understanding the circulation pattern and its influence on the adjacent coastal area and the interaction between the Ciénaga and the Caribbean Sea. The results support water resource and watershed management decisions that can improve the environmental status of the swamp complex.

BIO:
Constanza Ricaurte-Villota is a Marine Biologist from the Universidad del Valle, Colombia, with a Master and PhD in Coastal Oceanography from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Mexico. She leads the Marine and Coastal Geosciences Program of Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras (INVEMAR) since 2012. She is the recipient of the NATIONAL PRIZE OF ECOLOGY "ENRIQUE PEREZ ARBELAEZ", Fondo Para la Protección del Medio Ambiente "José Celestino Mutis" - Fundacion Escuela Nueva (FEN) Colombia. She is a recognized researcher, both nationally and internationally, of the current and past study of the impact of climate variability and climate change on coastal and marine ecosystems of the country and the Antarctic continent, especially related to changes in the water cycle.
She is a member of the Global Wetland Ecohydrology Network (GWEN), in which researchers from 15 countries participate, including Sweden, Germany, the United States, Japan and Colombia, and within this network she focuses on the study of coastal wetlands. She has been the leader of INVEMAR's Antarctic research program since 2014, where she has consolidated a collaborative network with researchers from Peru, Chile, Spain and Belgium, and has participated in several meetings of the technical groups of the Scientific Committee On Antarctic Research (SCAR).

Credit Points: 0.06

SYLLABUS/TOPICAL OUTLINE 1. Geography of the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta complex (CGSM) of coastal Colombia (15 min.). 2. Natural and anthropogenic history of the CGSM (15 min.). 3. Basin-scale hydrologic modeling of the CGSM (15 min.). 4. Questions and answers (15 min.)

COURSE CONTACT

Louis Mantini
9225 CR49, Live Oak, FL 32060
lfm@srwmd.org
P: 13866974891
F: 386.362.1056

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