Original Articles

Hazard Assessment of Moraine-dammed Lake Outburst Floods in the Himalayas, China

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  • 1. Department of Geography, Hunan University of Science & Technology, Xiangtan 411201, Hunan, China;
    2. State Key Laboratory of Cryosphere Science, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, CAS, Lanzhou 730000, China

Received date: 2008-12-25

  Revised date: 2009-05-15

  Online published: 2009-07-25

Supported by

Knowledge Innovation Project of CAS, No.KZCX2-YW-Q03-04); National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.40801025; No.40801030; National Basic Work Program of Chinese MST (Glacier Inventory of China II), No.2006FY110200; The Special Trade Project for Commonweal of Water Resources, No.200701046

Abstract

With climate warming, Glacier Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) are increasingly threatening people and property, which has been intensively studied worldwide. This paper takes the Himalayas region of China as the study area, where the GLOFs have frequently occurred during the past decades. The 143 potentially dangerous glacier lakes were first identified by six indexes in the study area. Then, the probabilities of three types of possible breaching modes (i.e. ice avalanche, glacier slide, ice-core melting) were quantitatively graded on the basis of the criteria of the probabilities of moraine-dammed lake breaching modes. Breach probabilities of the 143 potentially dangerous glacier lakes were further calculated by means of decision-making trees methods.

Cite this article

WANG Xin1, 2, LIU Shiyin1, GUO Wanqin1, YU Fengchun1, XU Junli1 . Hazard Assessment of Moraine-dammed Lake Outburst Floods in the Himalayas, China[J]. Acta Geographica Sinica, 2009 , 64(7) : 782 -790 . DOI: 10.11821/xb200907002

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