Catalina Delgado Checa

Biography

With more than 20 years exploring Ecuador’s landscapes — from Andean aquifers to mining and infrastructure projects — Catalina Delgado has built her career reading the subsurface like a story: layer by layer, always seeking to understand how water, rock, and communities connect. She is passionate about translating that geological insight into practical solutions for sustainable territorial management, and increasingly, into development opportunities for the communities living alongside that heritage.

She is a geologist from the Escuela Politécnica Nacional (Ecuador) and holds a master’s degree in Environmental Geology, with a specialization in Hydrogeology, Soils and Geomorphology, from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.

Over two decades, she has combined applied research with technical consulting across public institutions and private companies in Ecuador. She was part of the team at the National Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Research Institute (INIGEMM) for the 1:50,000-scale Geological Mapping Project of Ecuador, and worked with the Agency for Regulation and Control of Non-Renewable Energy and Natural Resources (ARCERNNR). Her career spans regional and local geological mapping, hydrogeological and geotechnical studies, groundwater conceptual modeling, and the coordination of multidisciplinary teams for mining, infrastructure, and water-supply projects, working alongside entities such as EPMAPS and several private consulting firms.

She has also found great fulfillment in teaching: as a Research Professor at Ikiam Regional Amazon University, she taught Historical Geology and Geological Prospecting, and took an active part in the Napo–Sumaco Geopark research project. Today, carrying that same curiosity forward, she is Occasional Professor 1 at Yachay Tech University, in the School of Earth Sciences, Energy and Environment, where she teaches Earth Sciences, Introduction to Field Methods, Introduction to Engineering, and Oceanography and Climate.

Research Interests

Catalina finds in hydrogeology a rich space to keep learning: the conceptual and numerical modeling of aquifer systems, the interaction between geology and groundwater, and their application to water resource management and risk assessment sit at the heart of her research. With the same care, she has characterized sites affected by ground instability, contamination, and mining activity, integrating geology, geomorphology, and geotechnics to support sound technical decisions.

More recently, she has discovered in geotourism a new way to connect her scientific background with the territory, seeing in the geological and cultural heritage of the Imbabura UNESCO Global Geopark a valuable opportunity to drive sustainable local development.