U.S.
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Open-File Report 02-249
Fifty-Year Flood-Inundation Maps for Choloma, Honduras
By M.C. Mastin and T.D. Olsen
ABSTRACT
After the devastating floods caused by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, maps of the areas and depths of the 50-year-flood inundation at 15 municipalities in Honduras were prepared as a tool for agencies involved in reconstruction and planning. This report, which is one in a series of 15, presents maps of areas in the municipality of Choloma that would be inundated by a 50-year flood of Río Choloma. Geographic Information System (GIS) coverages of the flood inundation are available on a computer in the municipality of Choloma as part of the in the Municipal GIS project and on the Internet at the Flood Hazard Mapping Web page (http://mitchnts1.cr.usgs.gov/projects/floodhazard.html). These coverages allow users to view the flood inundation in much more detail than is possible using the maps in this report.
Water-surface elevations for a 50-year-flood on Río Choloma at Choloma were determined using HEC-RAS, a one-dimensional, steady-flow, step-backwater computer program. The channel and floodplain cross sections used in HEC-RAS were developed from an airborne light detection and ranging (LIDAR) topographic survey of the area. There are no nearby long-term stream-gaging stations on Río Choloma; therefore, the 50-year-flood discharge for Río Choloma, 370 cubic meters per second, was estimated using a regression equation that relates the 50-year-flood discharge to drainage area and mean annual precipitation. The drainage area and mean annual precipitation estimated for Río Choloma at Choloma are 89.5 square kilometers and 2,164 millimeters, respectively.
Abstract
Introduction
Description of Study Area
Fifty-Year Flood Discharge
Water-Surface Profile of the 50-Year Flood
Fifty-Year Flood-Inundation Maps
Data Availability
References Cited
This report and associated figures are available online in Portable Document Format (PDF). If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader, it is available for free download from Adobe Systems Incorporated.
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Geographic Information System coverages of flood inundation and flood depth are available at
http://mitchnts1.cr.usgs.gov/projects/floodhazard.html
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Send questions or comments about this report to the author, Mark Mastin (mcmastin@usgs.gov) 253.428.3600 ext. 2609.
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