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U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Open-File Report 02-254

Fifty-Year Flood-Inundation Maps for La Ceiba, Honduras

Prepared in cooperation with the
U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

By D.L. Kresch, 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 La Ceiba that would be inundated by a 50-year-flood of Río Cangrejal. Geographic Information System (GIS) coverages of the flood inundation are available on a computer in the municipality of La Ceiba as part of 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 discharge of 1,030 cubic meters per second on Río Cangrejal at La Ceiba were computed 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 Cangrejal; therefore, the 50-year-flood discharge for Río Cangrejal at La Ceiba 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 Cangrejal at La Ceiba are 498 square kilometers and 2,306 millimeters, respectively.

CONTENTS

Abstract
Introduction
Description of Study Area
Fifty-Year Flood Discharge
Water-Surface Profiles 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.

Download the report (PDF, 588 KB)

Select 11x17 high resolution versions of Figure 1 (PDF, 7.4 MB)
and Figure 3 (PDF, 2.1 MB) to view or print.

Geographic Information System coverages of flood inundation and flood depth are available at
http://mitchnts1.cr.usgs.gov/projects/floodhazard.html

Document Accessibility: Adobe Systems Incorporated has information about PDFs and the visually impaired. This information provides tools to help make PDF files accessible. These tools convert Adobe PDF documents into HTML or ASCII text, which then can be read by a number of common screen-reading programs that synthesize text as audible speech. In addition, an accessible version of Acrobat Reader 5.0 for Windows (English only), which contains support for screen readers, is available. These tools and the accessible reader may be obtained free from Adobe at Adobe Access.

Send questions or comments about this report to the author, David L. Kresch (dlkresch@usgs.gov) 253.428.3600 ext. 2683.

For more information about USGS activities in Washington, visit the USGS Washington District home page.

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