EXTREME RAINFALL DURING EL NIÑO 2015/2016 AND ITS GEOSSYSTEMIC EFFECTS IN THE NORTHERN PARANÁ STATE, BRAZIL

Abstract

The occurrence of an El Niño episode between September/2015 and February/2016 caused rainfall increase in the state of Paraná, Brazil. In this paper, the aims were to analyse the spatial limit of this climatic event and the geosystemic responses in the landscape. We evaluated 32 precipitation series (1981 and 2016). The temporal parameter most indicative of an extreme rainfall event during the El Nino period was identified with the precipitation accumulated in six months. The return period (RP) of this parameter was calculated and spatialized using kriging. The results show that a longitudinal strip of 450 by 140 km had rainfall with RP > 30 years, reaching maximums higher than 150 years. Surveys from fieldworks, remote sensing, official documents and the newspapers show a diversity of disturbances, for instance: road closures, interruption in water and energy supply and erosion in urban and rural areas. We argue that the extraordinary rains affected many functionalities geosystemic, and that the Northwest region of Paraná had less resilience than the North Central and North Pioneer regions, due to the differences between the lithology and superficial cover of these regions.

Keywords: Erosion. Flooding. Resilience. Return period. Connectivity.