REGIONALIZATION OF HURRICANE RAINFALL IN THE FORESTS, PROTECTED AND
RESERVED ZONES OF MEXICO
Abstract
Hurricanes are extreme phenomena that affect the coasts of Mexico every
year. The economic and biodiversity losses caused by these extreme
events are extensive. However, little is known about the effects that
these severe weather incidents have on Mexico’s forest conservation and
protected areas. A hydrological characterization and regionalization of
the storms caused by the rain fields generated by all the hurricanes
that touched the Mexican coast from 1966 to 2017 were carried out.
Adimensional Huff Curves are proposed to get precipitation hyetograms
from which the erosion factor of a storm is obtained; using the
Universal Soil Loss Method (USLE). The results made it possible to get
the typical precipitation hyetograms in the forests and protected areas,
before, during, and after the impact of a hurricane. The proposed
hydrological regionalization made it possible to estimate the rainfall
intensity in 30 minutes to characterize the start of rain erosion. The
method proposed in this research was applied in the 177 Natural
Protected Areas (25628239 ha), as well as in the 370 voluntarily
designated areas for Conservation (399643 ha), in Mexico. It is
concluded that, with the regionalization and the proposed equations, it
is possible to get typical hurricane precipitation hyetograms, which
would allow us to detail the forest management plans in forests,
ecological reserves, and protected areas of Mexico.