Citation

Peinado Guevara HJ, Espinoza Ortiz M, Peinado Guevara VM, Herrera Barrientos J, Peinado Guevara JA, Delgado Rodríguez O, Pellegrini Cervantes JM, Sánchez Morales M. Sustainability (Basel) 2022; 14(11): e6560.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/su14116560

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The coastal city of Guasave, Sinaloa, located on the Mexican Pacific coast, is subject to extreme precipitation events, which have caused flooding with damage to the city's infrastructure. The factors that influence flooding are vegetation, geology, degree of soil saturation, drainage characteristics of the watershed, and the shape of the topographic relief. Of the above factors, the topographic relief, which is the subject of the study, has been partially modified in some areas by infrastructure works (from 20.2 m to 17.6 m), and the population of the urban area has grown by 51.8% in 17 years (2004-2021); therefore, the objective is to evaluate the potential flood risk due to changes in this factor and the growth of the urban area. When using this method, the potential flood risk was determined considering four extreme events, 1982, 1990, 1998, and 2019. It was found that the potential risk increases for the whole city, being more intense in sector III, which, before the modification of the topographic relief, was the area with the lowest risk of flooding. In an extreme event such as Hurricane Paul in 1982, practically the entire city would be flooded.

Language: en

Keywords

climate change; extraordinary floods; flood; high water; risk