Quantitative assessment on landslide dam risks and mitigation: an in-depth study on the Baige lake breach

Zhang, Qiang; Chen, Zuyu; Li, Yanlong; Yu, Shu; Wang, Lin; Zhou, Xingbo; Wu, Shuifeng

doi:10.1007/s12665-023-10778-6

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…For modern dammed lake OFs, there are usually historical or detailed data records, such as the 1933 Diexi Earthquake (25 August 1933, Ms.7.5), which resulted in 11 landslide-dammed lakes in the Diexi area, Sichuan, China, which breached on October 9 and killed approximately 2,500 people (Li et al, 1986). Another example is the Tangjiashan dammed lake induced by the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008 (Cui et al, 2012;Peng and Zhang, 2013;Chen et al, 2015;Wang Z. et al, 2022) and the Baige dammed lake in Jinsha River in 2018 (Tian et al, 2020;Zhong et al, 2020;Liu et al, 2021;Zhang et al, 2023), both of which have detailed data on the OFs. However, there are no records of ancient OF events, particularly those that occurred during the geologic era, which need to be deduced using geomorphology, hydrology, sedimentology, meteorology, and other methods.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sedimentary records of giant landslide-dam breach events in western Sichuan, China

Ma,

Chen,

2024

Front. Earth Sci.

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Introduction: Landslide-dammed lake outburst floods (LLOFs) are common natural disasters in high-mountain regions, posing serious safety threats to residents’ livelihoods and properties and causing major damage to engineering facilities. Giant landslides and river damming events commonly occur in the Eastern Tibetan Plateau in southwestern China. Dam failure generate LLOFs that form outburst deposits (ODs). This phenomenon is particularly common in some giant ancient landslide-dammed lakes.Methods: This study conducted a detailed investigation of the sedimentary characteristics of large-scale landslide-dammed lake outburst deposits in the Diexi Reach of the Upper Minjiang River and Tangjiashan Reach of the Tongkou River Basin, West Sichuan Plateau, China. Meanwhile, typical evidence of high-energy ODs was recorded.Results and Discussion: The longitudinal distribution of these ODs is similar to an elongated fan-shaped terrace along the river channel, presenting a distinctive sedimentary disordered–sub-ordered–ordered sequence from upstream to downstream. Several typical units of “sedimentary facies” are developed in the OD profiles, such as boulder units deposited by high-energy outburst flood (OF) events and the gravel and sand units representing pulsating-flow sedimentary environments during the recession stage. The grain size frequency curves are bimodal, and the granularity accumulated curves are upward convex, which reflect that the detrital characteristics of the sediment source area are mainly composed of coarse gravel and boulders. This indicates that the coarse gravel sediment gradually become decreased from upstream to downstream. Moreover, the OD hydrodynamic intensity displays a gradual weakening, and sediment sorting is improved. From upstream to the downstream, the mean particle-size and sorting of the ODs gradually decrease. The skewness become larger, and the kurtosis of the ODs is distributed in all the types. In addition, the different combinations of quartz sand surface microtextures indicate the transformation from high-to low-energy impacts over a short distance, which is controlled by flood hydrodynamics and regime.Significance: These sedimentary characteristics of ODs explain the hydrodynamic changes during the propagation of OFs, and are also important records for distinguishing between ODs, and “normal” floods.

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