DEVELOPING A GIS TOOL FOR MODELING CHANNELIZED DEBRIS FLOW PATHWAYS

Landslides are a deadly and costly natural disaster in the Appalachian Mountains. One of the deadliest types of landslides are channelized debris flows (CDF). Therefore, modeling channelized debris flow pathways can be useful for emergency management planning and the public. The GIS Tools in this study aspire to allow geo scientists to create potential channelized debris flow pathways for large areas of the Appalachian Mountains with relatively little time invested. The main tool that generates these pathways (CDF Pathways) only needs a Digital elevation Model (DEM), a hydro conditioned DEM, and a few parameters entered in by the user.

The CDF Pathways tool creates slope and planform curvature derivatives from the DEM. Debris flow initiation is determined by the intersect of the slope and curvature values entered by the user. Flow Direction is determined from the Hydro-Conditioned DEM. Flow ends when a minimum area of defined slope is encountered by the flow path. Both these values are entered by the user. Using the LiDAR derivatives in conjunction with user input values, the CDF Pathways tool can create polygon representation of potential channelized debris flow pathways.