Physical process on the surface and underground flow regime are spatially and temporal distributed, therefore the use of GIS software is key to understand the different patterns in groundwater flow and quality and the interaction with surface flow, geology and anthropogenic factors.

QGIS is a open geographical information system (GIS) software that brings a variety of tools for the thematic spatial representation of the groundwater quality components. This tutorial shows a whole exercise of data preparation, color based representation, ruled based representation of points above standars, spatial interpolation and contour representation.

OpenStreeMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a world spatial database. This project is motivated by the availability of map information around the world. The database is on continuous growth, it has more than 6.3 thousand million GPS points, around 5 million users and 1 million contributors.

The procedure to download spatial data from OSM has changed from previous QGIS version. Now in QGIS3 there are multiple options to download data from OSM; this tutorial show the installation, and operation of the QuickOSM plugin to perform smart access to the OSM database in QGIS.

QuickOSM works with the Overpass API that was developed to serve up custom selected parts of the OSM map data. This API is optimized for data consumers and it can allow the access millions of elements in some minutes with a specified search criteria (location, object type, tags, proximity or combinations of them).

QGIS 3 has a lot of new features and new tools for geoprocessing and spatial analysis, however there are some tools from QGIS 2 that hasn´t migrated yet. An example of this break was the OpenLayers plugin, one of the most popular and first plugins in QGIS 2 that is not available in the new version of QGIS.

OpenLayers plugin provide maps from Google, OSM and Bing in QGIS 2. Basemaps in QGIS 3 can be inserted as a XYZ Tiles on a process described on this tutorial. However, QuickMapServices plugin allow the search and implementation from a set of basemaps on different formats (TMS, WMS, WFS and GeoJSON) in QGIS 3.

Flow simulation is an important task for engineering and disaster management. From the free softwares available for flow simulation, HEC-RAS is a strong alternative for its continuous development, the capability to simulate many flow types, and the interaction with other softwares like QGIS or MODFLOW.

QGIS is a free and open source software Geographical Information System (GIS) application. There is a environment of available plugins in QGIS that perform specific tasks of analysis, representation and preprocessing. There are QGIS plugins related to HEC-RAS, in this tutorial we will use the Q-RAS plugin to develop a basic example of flow model geometry construction in QGIS and steady flow simulation in HEC-RAS.

With current technology and the availability of remote sensing tools through different servers makes it possible to determine or estimate the areas that are flooded or could be, the focus of this tutorial in which a methodology to determine flood zones will be described from the calculation of the NDVI and compare the results with the use of two servers, Sentinel 2 and Landsat 8.

The vegetation indices are obtained from area and satellite images and can be used to estimate changes in the state of vegetation, biomass, leaf area index and chlorophyll concentration. The determination of vegetation indices is calculated from the relationship between the reflectance of the electromagnetic spectrum. While biomass presents various methodologies to be able to estimate that they are based on field measurements that despite being a direct method are still very limited. Currently, the use of remote sensors provides a method to generate information on biomass.

In this tutorial the estimation and relationship of the biomass of a study area with the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the Normalized Red-Green Difference Index (NGRDI) will be carried out.

Mining and the treatment of metals are a significant source for the contribution of pollutants in various natural resources such as lakes. The impact of a pollutant on the lakes depends on the physical and chemical conditions that affect its toxicity and the degree of exposure related to concentration and time. The contribution of metals can be incorporated by precipitation, mine filtration, soil washing, leaching and percolation.

Remote sensing allows the interpretation of dynamic processes in a study area at a spatial and temporal level. This information is collected from the surface that is captured by a sensor located on board a satellite in orbit around the earth. In this way, you can compare images and analyze the changes of a study area.

Different space agencies have facilitated access to information provided by satellites through servers and web portals, where satellite images can be downloaded for the analysis and interpretation of resources, for this instance, the quality of seawater can be analyzed through the classification of specific footprints using geographic information systems tools such as QGIS 3 and the Semi-Automatic Classification plugin.