This work describes the extreme event of landslides occurred in January 2011 in the Rio de Janeiro mountainous region and discusses its relationship to the spatial and temporal variation of critical and prior rainfall. Interviews in the field let us establish ...

Landslides are common features in the Serra do Mar, located along the southeastern Brazilian coast, most of them associated with intense summer storms, specially on the soil-mantled steep hillslopes around Rio de Janeiro city, where the favelas (slums) proliferated ...