Title : Landslides.Rainfall one of the main triggering factors in the mountainous regions of Puebla, Mexico.
Abstract:
The rains are one of the main triggers of landslide phenomena in the mountainous region of Puebla, which values reach up 4500 mm/year in some places in this area. Rainfalls combined with other factors such as morphology (mountainous topographic relief with strong inclinations), strongly folded sedimentary rocks (conglomerates, sandstones, siltstones, and limestones), rock discontinuities (fissures, cracks, joints, stratigraphic planes, etc.) and human activity (cuts, excavations, overloads, mining, water discharge, deforestation, land use change, etc.), offer a scenario prone to landslide phenomena that cause human casualties, economic and environmental losses. The landslides disasters have affected many social sectors from these communities (housing, education, health, hydraulic infrastructure, electricity, communication, transportation, public services, agriculture, forestry, etc.), observing that in these sites there are communities of ethnic groups Nahuatls, Totonacs, Otomies and Tepehuas who build their houses out of sheet metal, cardboard, plastic and wood where any natural phenomenon represents a true disaster. This article presents a brief description of Puebla mountainous region, the effect of human activities on landslides, the relationship between rainfall and disasters, and the analysis of the rainfall threshold that has triggered landslides, whose empirical estimated value is 100 mm/day obtained from the analysis of pluviometric information recorded several years in various meteorological stations in the study area.
Audience take away:
- They will know the physiographic characteristics of the mountainous region of Puebla, formed by mountain ranges of marine sedimentary rocks, totally or partially covered by igneous rocks.
- They will confirm that rain is one of the main triggers of landslides in mountainous regions
- Civil engineers, geotechnics, geology, geophysics, hydraulics, hydrology, geomorphology, climatology and construction, among others.
- The precipitation threshold value will allow the establishment of civil protection plans to evacuate the population located in vulnerable sites in mountainous regions with high rainfall.
- Drainage construction elements for slope stabilization in places with heavy rainfall, must be designed taking into account the extent of the storm, type of terrain and its inclination, and the amount of rainfall per day (trenches, horizontal drains, relief wells, filter galleries, etc.)
