The Rainfall Intensity‐Duration Control of Debris Flows After Wildfire

Autor: Matthew A. Thomas, Donald N. Lindsay, David B. Cavagnaro, Jason W. Kean, Scott W. McCoy, Andrew P. Graber
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: Geophysical Research Letters, Vol 50, Iss 10, Pp n/a-n/a (2023)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1944-8007
0094-8276
DOI: 10.1029/2023GL103645
Popis: Abstract Increased wildfire activity in the western United States has exposed regional gaps in our understanding of postfire debris‐flow generation. To address this problem, we characterized flows in an unstudied area to test the rainfall intensity‐duration control of the hazard. Our rainfall measurements and field observations from the northern Sierra Nevada (California, USA) show that debris flows resulted from a short burst rainfall during a low‐accumulation storm. In contrast, a much higher accumulation storm (∼10 times more rainfall) with lower short‐duration rainfall rates only produced low‐hazard flooding. We conclude that total storm rainfall is not an ideal metric for identifying the rainfall conditions that initiate runoff‐generated debris flows in the first year after wildfire. Rather, a focus on short‐duration (
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