Hurricane Maria's Most Mobile (MMM) debris flows in nine study areas in the Lares, Naranjito and Utuado Municipalities, Puerto Rico

In 2017, Hurricane Maria triggered widespread landsliding in Puerto Rico. Published landslide inventories from Hurricane Maria (Bessette-Kirton and others, 2019; Baxstrom and others, 2021a, 2021b; Einbund and others, 2021a, 2021b) provided detailed mapping, including 2919 locations of headscarp points, travel distance lines, source areas, and landslide-affected areas (combined source and runout) in Lares, Naranjito and Utuado muncipalities. Landslide types included slumps, debris flows, rock falls, and other slope failures. We developed criteria to extract a subset of these published landslide-affected areas representative of Hurricane Maria’s most mobile (MMM) channelized debris flows. MMM were used for topographic characterization of channelized runout zones and assessment of predictive success of debris-flow inundation modeling (Brien and others, 2024). We selected MMM based on two characteristics: 1) &gt;40% of the runout area within ~5 m of a channel network derived from a 1-m digital elevation model (Brien and others, 2024) and 2) runout length &gt;100 m. 
This data release includes four shapefiles, divided by municipality and lithology, containing 124 unique landslide-affected areas:
NaranjitoMMM.shp – MMM from one study area in Naranjito municipality
LaresMMM.shp - MMM in from three study areas in Lares municipality
Utuado_sedsMMM.shp – MMM from one study area in Utuado municipality, sedimentary terrane
Utuado_intrusivesMMM.shp – MMM from four study areas in Utuado municipality, intrusive granodiorite terrane
References:
Baxstrom, K.W., Einbund, M.M., Schulz, W.H., 2021a, Map data from landslides triggered by Hurricane Maria in a section of Naranjito, Puerto Rico, U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9GBGA4I.
Baxstrom, K.W., Einbund, M.M., Schulz, W.H., 2021b, Map data from landslides triggered by Hurricane Maria in the greater karst region of northwest Puerto Rico: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9YYU7W1. 
Bessette-Kirton, E.K., Coe, J.A., Kelly, M.A., Cerovski-Darriau, C., Schulz, W.H., 2019, Map data from landslides triggered by Hurricane Maria in four study areas of Puerto Rico. U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9OW4SLX. 
Brien, D.L., Reid, M.E.,Cronkite-Ratcliff C., Perkins J.P., 2024, Topographic controls on landslide mobility: Modeling hurricane-induced landslide runout and debris-flow inundation in Puerto Rico, NHESS.
Einbund, M.M., Baxstrom, K.W., Schulz, W.H., 2021a, Map data from landslides triggered by Hurricane Maria in three study areas in the Lares Municipality, Puerto Rico: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9EASZZ7. 
Einbund, M.M., Baxstrom, K.W., Schulz, W.H., 2021b, Map data from landslides triggered by Hurricane Maria in four study areas in the Utuado Municipality, Puerto Rico: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9ZNUR1P.

Tags: debris-flows, hurricane-maria, landslide-inventory, landslide-mapping, landslides, lares, naranjito, puerto-rico, usgs-64c2def5d34e70357a32fd05, utuado
Organization: Department of the Interior