A characteristic rainfall is introduced to overcome the difficulties encountered in determining a critical rainfall value for triggering debris flow.The characteristic value is defined as the rainfall at which debris-...A characteristic rainfall is introduced to overcome the difficulties encountered in determining a critical rainfall value for triggering debris flow.The characteristic value is defined as the rainfall at which debris-flow occurrence probability shows a rapid increase,and can be used as a warning rainfall threshold for debris flows.Investigation of recorded debris flows and 24-hour rainfall data at Jiangjia basin,Yunnan Province,in southwestern China,demonstrates the existence of such a characteristic rainfall.It was found that the characteristic rainfall corresponds to the daily rainfall of 90% cumulative probability by analyzing the basin's daily rainfall histogram.The result provides a simple and useful method for estimating a debris-flow warning rainfall threshold from the daily rainfall distribution.It was applied to estimate the debris-flow warning rainfall threshold for the Subaohe basin,a watershed in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake zone with many physical characteristics similar to those of the Jiangjia basin.展开更多
基金funded by the National Program on Key Basic Research Project (973 Program) (Grant No. 2008CB425802)the Knowledge Innovation Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. KZCX2-YW-302)the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 40701014)
文摘A characteristic rainfall is introduced to overcome the difficulties encountered in determining a critical rainfall value for triggering debris flow.The characteristic value is defined as the rainfall at which debris-flow occurrence probability shows a rapid increase,and can be used as a warning rainfall threshold for debris flows.Investigation of recorded debris flows and 24-hour rainfall data at Jiangjia basin,Yunnan Province,in southwestern China,demonstrates the existence of such a characteristic rainfall.It was found that the characteristic rainfall corresponds to the daily rainfall of 90% cumulative probability by analyzing the basin's daily rainfall histogram.The result provides a simple and useful method for estimating a debris-flow warning rainfall threshold from the daily rainfall distribution.It was applied to estimate the debris-flow warning rainfall threshold for the Subaohe basin,a watershed in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake zone with many physical characteristics similar to those of the Jiangjia basin.
