Abstract
In the Eastern Himalayas syntaxes (Tibet Plateau, China), increasing periglacial debris flows have been documented in recent decades, but minimal research has focused on the material properties and the topography of initiation areas. In this work, we applied a series of satellite images from 2000 to 2021 to examine the hanging glacier status and debris-flow initiation conditions in Sanggu watershed. Five large-scale debris flow events in 2003, 2015, 2018, 2020, and 2021 were interpreted. Visual interpretation, together with pixel dichotomy model and the COSI-Corr method, demonstrated that debris flows mainly initiated from the periglacial environment of catchments I and II. Since 2000, the glacier has exhibited general shrinkage, punctuated by occasional advance. The failure potential, expressed as the product of changed glacier area and topographic slope, positively relates to the inundation area of debris flows. This result implies that either abrupt glacier advancement or retreat may result in large debris flows, and glacier terminus position may serve as the main driving factor for debris flow initiation. Importantly, a lower limited area-slope initiation condition was developed in this work, which may provide a reference point for identifying possible failure areas of periglacial debris. The results of this work contribute to knowledge about the material properties and magnitude prediction of periglacial debris flows in alpine watersheds.
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Data Availability
The data used in this work are all from https://search.asf.alaska.edu/, https://scihub.copernicus.eu/, and https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/.
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This study was supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (Grant No. 2019QZKK0902).
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The authors acknowledge the contribution works of team members in the co-author list. Miss Zhilan Wang finished the data collection and analysis following the guidance of Professor Chao Ma. Professor Chao Ma launched this work by the inspiration of glacier terminus energy change in analysis of debris flow inundation. Professor Kaiheng Hu gave insightful comments to improve the manuscript. Professor Liqun Lyu and Shuang Liu gave technical help during the debris-flow event identification and the glacier area interpretation.
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Wang, Z., Ma, C., Hu, K. et al. Investigation of initiation conditions of periglacial debris flows in Sanggu watershed, Eastern Himalayas, Tibet Plateau (China). Landslides 20, 813–827 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-022-02003-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-022-02003-5