The aim of this paper is to create a glacial lake inventory for the Cordillera Huayhuash in Peru and to evaluate the susceptibility of lakes to the generation of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Using high-resolution satellite images, we undertook qualitative and quantitative analysis of lake type, characteristics and distribution, and placed our findings within the context of existing Peru-wide lake inventories. We also mapped and analyzed past GLOFs, revealing a total of 10 GLOFs and 4 ambiguous events, most of which have not been reported before. We found that past GLOFs usually occurred as a result of moraine dam breach during the proglacial stage of lake evolution. Further, we used our lake inventory to evaluate GLOF susceptibility of all lakes larger than 20,000 m2. Of 46 evaluated lakes, only two lakes (Lake Tsacra and Lake W014) are currently susceptible to generating a GLOF, which would most likely be through dam overtopping resulting from a flood originating in smaller lakes located upstream. The future perspectives of lake evolution and implications for GLOF hazard management are discussed in light of the post-Little Ice Age glacier ice loss as well as in the context of extensive related research undertaken in the nearby Cordillera Blanca.
Supraglacial lakes greatly affect the rate of glacier ablation and a potentially dangerous (GLOF-Glacier lake outburst flood) proglacial lake often forms through their development. The main part of the paper recapitulates the factors of the formation and drainage of supraglacial lakes, as well as the mechanisms of their development through a review of the scientific literature. In total there are five factors of the formation of supraglacial lakes and four factors (three of them alternative to one another) of the drainage. Three factors delimit the maximum extent of the emergence of supraglacial lakes, two of them determine the detailed distribution of localities suitable for hosting supraglacial lakes. The circumstances leading to the drainage mainly reflect the decisive role played by englacial voids. According to the current degree of scientific knowledge there are no factors controlling the development of supraglacial lakes. The complete process of the expansion of a supraglacial lake may be viewed as a positive feedback loop consisting of three major mechanisms. In the final part all of the factors are provided with quantitative intervals responding to the respective probability scales, which enable a relatively objective assessment of the probabilities of formation/drainage of supraglacial lakes. The most frequent application is the case of the assessment of the probability of the formation of a large supraglacial lake, due to its likely development into a proglacial lake.
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