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Correlation between rainfall and landslides in Nova Friburgo, Rio de Janeiro—Brazil: a case study

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Abstract

Rainfall is recognized as one of the main factors that influence the triggering of landslides in mountainous regions. The city of Nova Friburgo, which is located in the elevated regions of Rio de Janeiro—Brazil, suffers constantly from landslides usually associated with extreme rainfall events. Under this framework, an empirical study was conducted to analyze records from the rain gauge Ypu jointly with landslides dataset in order to define accumulated precipitation thresholds associated to the occurrence of mass movements in the referred municipality. In addition, we examined the relationship between the Ypu rainfall dataset and the rainfall estimated by Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite for the pixel in which the rain gauge Ypu is located to assess the representativeness of both types of measurements in our case study due to the rugged features of the relief. The TRMM data revealed a similar behavior to the Ypu in situ data surface, highlighting a correlation of 0.5 (R 2 = 0.25). The study showed that the integrated analyses between the rainfall and landslides provided important information to contribute to decision making in the city of Nova Friburgo—RJ, especially with regard to the issuance of warnings and alerts to the responsible agencies and population.

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Acknowledgments

First, we would like to thank CNPq, a Brazilian educational agency that provided the scholarship for the first author. A special thank you goes to Secretaria de Defesa Civil de Nova Friburgo and to Instituto Estadual do Ambiente, RJ (INEA) for providing landslide and rainfall datasets. The authors would like also to thank the Civil Engineering Program of Instituto Alberto Luiz Coimbra de Pos-Graduação e Pesquisa de Engenharia (COPPE)—Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) through the support of the Laboratory of Water Resourcesand Environmental Issues (LABH2O) and the Department of Meteorology—Institute of Geosciences (IGEO)– Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) with respect to data and infrastructure provided by these institutions for this research. The authors would like to express their sincere appreciation to the financial support for the work, which came through Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ)—ProjectPEC/COPPE-FAPERJ014/2010(2010–2012), Project FAPERJ—Process E-26/103.116/2011 (2012–2014) and Project FAPERJ—Pensa Rio—Edital 19/2011 (2012–2014)—E26/110.753/2012, Project CNPq Edital Universal No. 14/2013—Process 485136/2013-9, which is focused on rainfall-runoff modeling and on the corresponding issue of water balance and soil moisture with respect to extreme events, Secretaria de Educação Superior (SESu)—Ministério da Educação (MEC)-CAPES-AUX-PE-PET-1228/2009(PET CIVILUFRJ), educational agencies of the Brazilian government. The authors would like also to recognize the support of CPRM, INEA, ANA, EMBRAPA, and INMET, for the continuous support of the research in hydrometeorology in Brazil. In addition, the authors would like to recognize the support of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). The TRMM data were processed by the TRMM Science Data and Information System (TSDIS) and the TRMM Office; they are archived and distributed by the Goddard Distributed Active Archive Center. TRMM is an international project jointly sponsored by the Japan National Space Development Agency (NASDA) and the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Office of Earth Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Civil Engineering Program (PEC), Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute of Post Graduate Studies and Research (COPPE), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Nathalia Silva de Oliveira

  2. Laboratory of Water Resources and Environment, Civil Engineering Program, Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute of Post Graduate Studies and Research, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Otto Correia Rotunno Filho

  3. Department of Meteorology, Institute of Geosciences, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Edilson Marton

  4. Faculty of Geology, Center for Technology and Sciences, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Corbiniano Silva

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  1. Nathalia Silva de Oliveira
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  2. Otto Correia Rotunno Filho
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  3. Edilson Marton
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  4. Corbiniano Silva
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Correspondence to Corbiniano Silva.

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de Oliveira, N.S., Rotunno Filho, O.C., Marton, E. et al. Correlation between rainfall and landslides in Nova Friburgo, Rio de Janeiro—Brazil: a case study. Environ Earth Sci 75, 1358 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-016-6171-7

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