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This work studies the statistical characteristics of potential evapotranspiration calculations and their relevance within the water balance used to determine water availability in hydrological basins. The purpose of this study was as follows: first, to apply a missing data reconstruction scheme in weather stations of the Rio Queretaro basin; second, to reduce the generated uncertainty of temperature data: mean, minimum, and maximum values in the evapotranspiration calculation which has a paramount importance in the manner of obtaining the water balance at any hydrological basin. The reconstruction of missing data was carried out in three steps: (1) application of a 4-parameter sinusoidal type regression to temperature data, (2) linear regression to residuals to obtain a regional behavior, and (3) estimation of missing temperature values for a certain year and during a certain season within the basin under study; estimated and observed temperature values were compared. Finally, using the obtained temperature values, the methods of Hamon, Papadakis, Blaney and Criddle, Thornthwaite, and Hargreaves were employed to calculate potential evapotranspiration that was compared to the real observed values in weather stations. With the results obtained from the application of this procedure, the surface water balance was corrected for the case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today the knowledge of physical parameters of a basin is essential to know adequately the rainfall-runoff process; it is well known that the specific characteristics of each basin such as temperature, geographical location, and elevation above sea level affect the maximumdischarge and the basin time response. In this paper a physically basedmodel has been applied, to analyze water balance by evaluating the volume rainfall-runoff using SHETRAN and hydrometric data measurements in 2003. The results have been compared with five ETp different methodologies in the Querétaro river basin in central Mexico. With these results the main effort of the authorities should be directed to better control of land-use changes and to working permanently in the analysis of the related parameters, which will have a similar behavior to changes currently being introduced and presented in observed values in this basin. This methodology can be a strong base for sustainable water management in a basin, the prognosis and effect of land-use changes, and availability of water and also can be used to determine application of known basin parameters, basically depending on land-use, land-use changes, and climatological database to determine the water balance in a basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]