Reconstruction of catastrophic outburst floods of the Diexi ancient landslide-dammed lake in the Upper Minjiang River, Eastern Tibetan Plateau

Junxue Ma (), Jian Chen (), Zhijiu Cui (), Wendy Zhou (), Ruichen Chen () and Chengbiao Wang ()
Additional contact information
Junxue Ma: China University of Geosciences (Beijing)
Jian Chen: China University of Geosciences (Beijing)
Zhijiu Cui: Peking University
Wendy Zhou: Colorado School of Mines
Ruichen Chen: China University of Geosciences (Beijing)
Chengbiao Wang: China University of Geosciences (Beijing)

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2022, vol. 112, issue 2, No 8, 1221 pages

Abstract: Abstract Landslide-dammed lake outburst floods (LLOFs) may pose serious safety threats to nearby residents and their livelihoods, as well as cause major damages to the downstream areas in mountainous regions. This study presents the Diexi ancient landslide-dammed lake (DALL), located along the Upper Minjiang River, in the eastern margins of the Tibetan Plateau. The DALL is known to have an estimated previous maximal lake area of 1.1 × 107 m2 and an impounded volume of 2.9 × 109 m3. At approximately 27 ka BP, the ancient landslide dam failed, and catastrophic LLOFs occurred. It was determined that the peak discharge of the Diexi ancient LLOFs could be reconstructed using regression, parametric, and boulder competence approaches. The reconstructed average maximum peak discharge was approximately 79,500 m3/s, with an estimated uncertainty bound of 70,000 to 90,000 m3/s. This indicated that the Diexi ancient LLOFs were the largest outburst floods to have occurred in the Upper Minjiang River Valley since the Late Pleistocene Period. The differences in the widths and slopes within the former and latter reaches of the dam indicated that the geomorphic influences on the river channel resulting from the DALL and its LLOFs have been present for tens of thousands of years. These findings were of major significance in deepening the understanding of the existence and disappearances of important river knickpoints on a time scale of tens of thousands of years.

Keywords: Landslide dam; Ancient dammed lake; Landslide-dammed lake outburst floods (LLOFs); Peak discharge; Uncertainty assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11069-022-05223-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:112:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s11069-022-05223-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-022-05223-z

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().