ELEMENTOS BÁSICOS PARA LA PROTECCIÓN DE LAS AGUAS SUBTERRÁNEAS APLICADOS EN EL ACUÍFERO DE MANAGUA, NICARAGUA

Abstract

With the effort and coordination between several public institutions of Nicaragua and Sweden, ithas been possible to contribute substantially to the protection of groundwater with the development of methodsin 3 large aspects.A technical frame developed in MARENA permitted the application of methods to locate the vulnerable areasto contamination in the aquifer and estimate the potential danger of anthropogenic activities to the ground-water. A communication frame developed at UNI, was used for the identification of obstacles for the protection of groundwater and identification of the interested parties. This frame can be complemented with education and publicity of the information about the subject. A complementary support frame, consisting of ageographic information system (GIS) and developed in MARENA is applied to make technical maps and tocombine different elements, depending on the evaluation purposes. Also, a modeling system installed inENACAL for the application of a mathematical FLOWPATH model was used to model the recharging areasof the fields with wells in the eastern subbasin.All these elements have been combined to produce a protection plan which contains the instructions about coun-termeasures that might be applied for the prevention and control of contamination of underground water in theaquifer of Managua and how to extend investigations to other aquifers in Nicaragua.