Lacar Lake Demonstration Project for Ecohydrology: Improving land use policy at Lacar Lake Watershed based on an Ecohydrological approach (San Martín de los Andes – Neuquén – R. Argentina)

The major point for Lacar Demosite (LDS) is the sustainable management of a representative basin of Andean Patagonian region where the main problem is the impact of land transformation on water quality and environmental services. The aim of the LDS is the reduction of soil erosion, the mitigation of floods in urban areas and the improvement of ecosystem services, based on Ecohydrological ideas and principles, and using phytotechnologies. Advances are presented for LDS showing that regulation of surface hydrology (water runoff; nutrients and sediments loads) at the watershed scale, through land use, vegetation cover and phytotechnologies, improve the aquatic ecological processes and the ecosystems services (water quality, landscape aesthetic values).