The use of eco-engineering in a watershed management program in Southern Patagonia

A drastic land use change and environmental degradation take place in Southern Andean Patagonia steep watersheds, especially upstream the urbanized areas. The paper presents a synthesis of environmental degradation assessment due erosion at Trabunco-Quitrahue watershed, near the top ski resort of San Martín de los Andes (Argentina). In order to evaluate the degradations processes, a combination of methods is applied by means of GIS techniques with detailed field work. In order to mitigate the soil erosion and land degradation, a Watershed Management Program (WMP) was implemented from interdisciplinary and horizontal cooperation point of view. The WMP includes a set of structural and non structural management measures with the use of eco-engineering techniques. The results demonstrate a growing acceptance of use of "soft measures" combined with traditional ones, in order to mitigate the degradation process. After four years of soft measures implementation the results are very good.