Franklin M. Torres-Bejarano

Universidad de Córdoba (Colombia) · Environmental Engineering

The development and construction of highway infrastructure are essential in developing countries, whereas its layout and construction sometimes interact with the coastal environment. One problem to attend to is that the outline and geometry designs impact as little as possible on the hydrodynamic circulation of coastal bodies in order to alter the...

This research demonstrated the feasibility of applying Sentinel-2 images to generate empirical models and estimate physicochemical parameters concentration, particularly nutrients in the wetland system called Bajo Sinú wetlands complex, Colombia. Spearman correlations were determined between water quality parameters, which were monitored at 17 poin...

Characterizing water quality in coastal waters through spatial observations is challenging, due to spatial and temporal variations in water composition. Nitrate, an important compound for water quality assessment, has received little attention in estimates made from satellite measurements, even though it can be estimated using models generated from...

In this study, remote sensing and geographic information systems were used to assess the influence of land cover characteristics on the water quality of the El Guájaro reservoir, in northern Colombia. The water quality data were acquired during three measurement and sampling campaigns (2013, 2015 and 2016), complemented with data obtained by the re...

A trophic state increase relates to surface water bodies nutrient enrichment, due to the chemical products used such as fertilizers in agriculture and residues from cattle raising activities. This research consists of nutrient transport numerical modeling to analyze the Betancí reservoir trophic state in Colombia; Water samples were collected to an...

Las variaciones en las tasas de transporte de sedimento en suspensión pueden causar impactos significativos en deltas y estuarios, pues los sedimentos fluviales desempeñan un papel fundamental en la estabilidad de estos ecosistemas costeros. Este trabajo presenta la aplicación de un modelo numérico 3D para simular el transporte de sedimentos en el...

Water is one of the most important and abundant resources on earth; therefore, determining easier and more accurate methods of measuring water quality has become challenging in recent years. Images of the Sentinel-2 multispectral (MSI) sensor and field measurements for three seasons and 39 spectral indices were evaluated to identify those that can...

One of the negative impacts of polluting activities on aquatic ecosystems is the loss of its natural self-purification ability, for this reason, the purpose of this research was to evaluate the Sinú River capacity to assimilate wastewater discharges. Monitoring of several water quality parameters was carried out in the river at different seasons an...

Constructed wetlands are novel systems distinguished by their economy, easy maintenance and operation, also characterized by their complex mechanism to remove a wide range of pollutants. Four artificial wetlands, two planted with Typha latofolia and two unplanted, were filled with wastewater obtained from the mixture of residual fuel from the servi...

Sanitary and industrial wastewater discharged into rivers, is a general problem that occurs in most of the world and Mexico is not the exception, the main goal of this research is to determine based on simulations of pollutants concentrations, the assimilation capacity of the Gallinas River against discharges of agricultural and industrial wastewat...

En la actualidad, siguen siendo insuficientes las acciones que se realizan para controlar, mitigar o evitar los impactos negativos sobre el medio ambiente. En este libro, se estudia la dinámica de los ecosistemas como estrategia fundamental para tomar decisiones de gestión que se orienten a reducir o evitar la contaminación y/o degradación ambienta...

This research was carried out in a wetlands complex of great environmental and socioeconomic importance located in the north of Colombia, highly impacted by different anthropic activities that take place in the region, e.g., livestock, agriculture and urban wastewater disposal. Field measurements of pH, temperature, turbidity, electrical conductivi...

Ciénaga de Mallorquín is a coastal lagoon designated as a RAMSAR site due to its ecological regional and international importance. In this work, the environmental fluid dynamics code explorer modeling system was implemented to determine the spatio-temporal distribution of temperature, dissolved oxygen, chemical oxygen demand and nutrient levels, an...

This paper describes the development of a two-dimensional water quality model that solves hydrodynamic equations tied to transport equations with reactions mechanisms inherent in the processes. This enables us to perform an accurate assessment of the pollution in a coastal ecosystem. The model was developed with data drawn from the ecosystem found...

Heavy metals have become a subject of special concern worldwide, mainly due to high persistence in the environment, toxicity, biogeochemical recycling and ecological risk. Therefore, the objective of this investigation was to analyze the spatial–temporal distribution of heavy metals in water and sediments to determine the environmental status of El...

This paper describes the development of a two-dimensional water quality model that solves hydrodynamic equations tied to transport equations with reactions mechanisms inherent in the processes. This enable us to perform an accurate assessment of the pollution in a coastal ecosystem. The model was developed with data drawn from the ecosystem found i...

El Guajaro study zone, and water quality results obtained from Landsat 8 image processing

The aim of this study was to evaluate the viability of using Landsat 8 spectral images to estimate water quality parameters and depth in El Guájaro Reservoir. On February and March 2015, two samplings were carried out in the reservoir, coinciding with the Landsat 8 images. Turbidity, dissolved oxygen, electrical conductivity, pH and depth were eval...

In this study, empirical models were generated to estimate water quality parameters, with the objective of showing the benefits of the satellite remote sensing application in the characterization of coastal waters. The study area was Playa Colorada Bay, located in the northwest of Mexico, in the eastern part of the Gulf of California. In two season...

Fragile coastal areas suffer from human activities. Environmental quality is oneof the most important aspects in a tourist destination of sun and sand. The quality ofbathing water and sand became indicators in the worldwide competition of beach desti-nations. We studied the water and sand quality along the beach of Puerto Velero, innorthern Colombi...

In this work a fast computational particles tracer model is developed based on Particle-In-Cell method to estimate the sediment transport in the access zone of a river port area. To apply the particles tracer method, first it is necessary to calculate the hydrodynamic fields of the study zone to determine the velocity fields in the three directions...

The Guájaro reservoir is the most important water body located at the north of Colombia. It is supplied by an artificial channel (Canal del Dique) through a two floodgates system. As a result of excess nutrients and other pollution loads from the drainage basin in recent decades, the Guájaro reservoir suffers eutrophication and other pollution prob...

In this paper a study of the hydrodynamics of the Agua Brava lagoon 7 system is performed by numerical modeling. The importance of studying this 8 lagoon system lies with aquaculture activities carried out by shrimp farms. The π-9 HYDRO model is used for the numerical simulations of hydrodynamics and tem-10 perature and salinity dispersion. The bou...

Shrimp aquaculture has grown to the extent that pressure on natural ecosystems has greatly increased. The shrimp farms effluents usually discharge their wastes, with high nutrients load, into coastal water bodies without any previous treatment. This work presents a method to design a constructed wetland for handling these effluents. Our method is b...

The coastal water pollution is a problem that responds to the overpopulation, natural resources exploitation and the increase of technologic development; this has led to an alteration of the physical, chemical and biological parameters of both continental and coastal waters. Among the main sources of pollution are those arising from industrial acti...

Knowledge about the coastal systems functions is limited by observations scarcity and researches in the hydrodynamics field. This study shows how numerical models can help to generate knowledge about coastal processes with little local information and at relatively low cost. This research is a step to the comprehension and the hydrodynamic and tran...

The Guájaro Reservoir in northern Colombia is a hydrosystem that is supplied by an artificial channel (Canal del Dique) through a system of floodgates. During the last decades, has been presenting problems of excessive use, which is why, it is necessary to regulate the hydraulic structures that serve this water body, as they play an important role...

Guájaro reservoir is located in the south eastern of Atlántico department (Colombia). This water body is the most important in the region since its construction in 1964. It is supplied by an artificial channel (Canal del Dique) by means of two floodgates system. As a result of excess nutrients and other pollution loads from the drainage basin in re...

La situación ambiental de los cuerpos de agua del departamento del Atlántico se ha ido deteriorando en las últimas décadas, dentro de estos el embalse El Guájaro, donde se presentan problemas de sobre-explotación, aportes de cargas importantes de contaminación, lo que origina la disminución de la capacidad de asimilación del embalse. La principal f...

Validation of a hydrodynamic and water quality model for the Magdalena River, at the adjacent stretch of Barranquilla, Colombia ABSTRACT Water quality models are tools of control, that contribute to the planning, prevention and decision making focused on water resource management. Therefore, different countries, among which is Colombia, have estab...

Water quality models are tools of control, that contribute to the planning, prevention and decision making focused on water resource management. Therefore, different countries, among which is Colombia, have established the relevance of its implementation to determine the discharges assimilation of water bodies. This is why this research aims to sim...

RESUMEN: Algunos sistemas costeros de México han visto alteradas sus actividades económicas en los últimos años por los impactos que causa la industria. Estas alteraciones son atribuidas en ocasiones, a la operación de plantas de generación de energía eléctrica como las Centrales Termoeléctricas, de la Comisión Federal de Electricidad. En particula...

Resumen Este trabajo presenta resultados de un proyecto de investigación que tiene por objetivo determinar indicadores sociales y ambientales que afectan la ca-lidad del agua de las playas de Puerto Velero y Caño Dulce en el municipio de Tubará, Atlántico, Colombia. Los monitoreos se realizan una vez al mes en tres puntos a lo largo de las dos play...

Decision makers involved in prevention of water contamination often lack the technical knowledge of water quality evaluation or the comprehension of complex software for environmental information management required to make effective decisions. Providing information about the environment is not an easy task due to its complex structure, rela-tionsh...

Environmental Information Systems (EIS) have become in very important tool for their capacity of manipulating huge amounts and heterogeneous types of data, and for their capacity to integrate different technologies in a single computational tool. The need of appropriate tools for diagnosis and increasingly accurate ecosystems forecasts, require dev...

Los Sistemas de Información Ambiental (SIA) se han convertido en herramientas extremadamente importantes, por su capacidad de manejar grandes cantidades y heterogéneos tipos de datos, así como por su capacidad de integrar diferentes tecnologías en una única herramienta computacional. El principal objetivo del trabajo aquí presentado, fue diseñar y...

Many decision makers are hindered in their daily work by “un-integrated” systems which can force them to move data around between tools which are only more or less compatible. Because environmental models play an important role in environmental decision support systems, the integration of models into user-friendly integrated decision support system...

Abstract This paper is the second of a two parts describing the activities and research carried out during the evaluation and design of the remediation process of the Cencali lagoon in the center of Villahermosa, Tabasco., Mexico. The hypereutrophic status of this waterbody is mainly caused by the accumulation of large amounts of sediments origina...

This paper is the second of a two parts describing the activities and research carried out during the evaluation and design of the remediation process of the Cencali lagoon in the center of Villahermosa, Tabasco., Mexico. The hypereutrophic status of this waterbody is mainly caused by the accumulation of large amounts of sediments originated from i...

As a result of urban runoff and wastewater discharges, important amounts of sediment have accumulated in the Cencali lagoon, located in the center of Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico. A bathymetry was performed in 50 points, and the accumulated volume of these solids was quantified in 31,550 m3. Sediment and pollutant yields from urban runoff and wast...

Se presenta la descripción, validación y aplicación de un modelo para el cálculo de la calidad del agua en cauces naturales. La componente hidrodinámica se resuelve en dos tiempos, primero se calcula el perfil hidráulico satisfaciendo la ecuación de la energía a partir de una sección de control en donde se conoce el nivel y el caudal; en segundo té...

In this paper, description, validation and application of a 2D water quality model for natural rivers is presented. The hydrodynamic component is solved in two times, first, the hydraulic profile is calculated satisfying the energy equation starting from a control section where the level and the flow are know; then, the hydrodynamic is calculated f...

As a result of urban runoff and wastewater discharges, important amounts of sediment have accumulated in the Cencali lagoon, located in the center of Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico. A bathymetry was performed in 50 points, and the accumulated volume of these solids was quantified in 31,550 m3. Sediment and pollutant yields from urban runoff and wast...