Fifty-year flood-inundation maps for Choloma, Honduras

Open-File Report 2002-249
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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 Rio 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 Rio 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 Rio Choloma; therefore, the 50-year-flood discharge for Rio 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 Rio Choloma at Choloma are 89.5 square kilometers and 2,164 millimeters, respectively.
Publication type Report
Publication Subtype USGS Numbered Series
Title Fifty-year flood-inundation maps for Choloma, Honduras
Series title Open-File Report
Series number 2002-249
DOI 10.3133/ofr02249
Edition -
Year Published 2002
Language ENGLISH
Description 9 p.
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