Reconstruction and Characterisation of Past and the Most Recent Slope Failure Events at the 2021 Rock-Ice Avalanche Site in Chamoli, Indian Himalaya

Bhardwaj, Anshuman; Sam, Lydia

doi:10.3390/rs14040949

Cited by 16 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 78 publications

(160 reference statements)

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“…In line with idealized process chain model (2), the catastrophic mass movement from the 5,500 m Ronti Peak, in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, 7 February 2021, initiated as a 26.9 × 10 6 m³ failure of mostly rock (80%) and glacial ice (20%) (Bhardwaj & Sam, 2022). Melting of this ice from frictional heating as the flow descended over a local elevation range of >3,000 m (to the hydropower dam at Tapovan) was essential to the downstream evolution of the flow, transforming the rock and ice avalanche into a highly mobile debris flow.…”

Section: Description Of Process Chainsmentioning

confidence: 88%

Geomorphic Process Chains in High‐Mountain Regions—A Review and Classification Approach for Natural Hazards Assessment

Mani,

Allen,

Evans

et al. 2023

Reviews of Geophysics

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Populations and infrastructure in high mountain regions are exposed to a wide range of natural hazards, the frequency, magnitude, and location of which are extremely sensitive to climate change. In cases where several hazards can occur simultaneously or where the occurrence of one event will change the disposition of another, assessments need to account for complex process chains. While process chains are widely recognized as a major threat, no systematic analysis has hitherto been undertaken. We therefore establish new understanding on the factors that directly trigger or alter the disposition for subsequent events in the chain and derive a novel classification scheme and parameters to aid natural hazard assessment. Process chains in high mountains are commonly associated with glacier retreat or permafrost degradation. Regional differences exist in the nature and rate of sequencing—some process chains are almost instantaneous, while other linkages are delayed. Process chains involving rapid sequences are difficult to predict, and impacts are often devastating. We demonstrate that process chains are triggered most frequently by progressive failures, being the result of gradual landscape weakening and not due to the occurrence of a distinct process. If fluvial processes are part of the process chain the reach (or mobility) of process chains is increased. Increased mobility can also occur if sediment deposition areas along river channels are activated. As climate changes causes glacial environments to transform into sediment‐rich paraglacial and fluvial landscapes, it is expected that the mobility of process chains will increase in the future.

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Section: Description Of Process Chainsmentioning

confidence: 88%

Geomorphic Process Chains in High‐Mountain Regions—A Review and Classification Approach for Natural Hazards Assessment

Mani,

Allen,

Evans

et al. 2023

Reviews of Geophysics

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“…However, climate change is increasing the threat of a similar cascade process initiating from supraglacial lakes that are enlarging on the tongue of Chorabari glacier. The catastrophic mass movement from the 5500 m Ronti Peak, in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, February 7 2021, initiated as a 26.9 x 10 6 m 3 failure of mostly rock (80%) and glacial ice (20%) (Bhardwaj and Sam, 2022). Melting of this ice from frictional heating as the flow descended over a local elevation range of > 3000 m (to the hydropower dam at Tapovan) was essential to the downstream evolution of the flow, transforming the rock and ice avalanche into a highly mobile debris flow.…”

Section: Kedarnath 2013 and Chamoli 2021 As Idealized Process Chainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geomorphic process chains in high-mountain regions - A review and classification approach for natural hazards assessment

Mani

Allen

Evans

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Human populations and infrastructure in high mountain regions are exposed to a wide range of natural hazards, the frequency, magnitude, and location of which are extremely sensitive to climate change. In cases where several hazards can occur simultaneously or where the occurrence of one event will change the disposition of another, assessments need to account for complex process chains. While process chains are widely recognized as a major threat, no systematic analysis has been undertaken. We therefore assemble a broad set of process chain events from across the globe to establish new understanding on the factors that directly trigger or alter the disposition for subsequent events in the chain. Based on this new understanding, we derive a novel classification scheme and parameters to aid natural hazard assessment. Most process chains in high mountains are commonly associated with glacier retreat or permafrost degradation. Regional differences exist in the nature and rate of sequencing-some process chains are almost instantaneous, while other linkages are delayed. Process chains involving rapid sequences are difficult to predict or mitigate, and impacts are often devastating. We demonstrate that process chains are initialized most frequently as threshold failures, being the result of gradual landscape weakening and not due to the occurrence of a distinct trigger. The co-occurrence of fluvial processes or activation of sediment deposition areas increases the reach of process chains. Climate change is therefore expected to increase the reach of events in the future, as glacial environments transform into sediment-rich paraglacial and fluvial landscapes.

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“…Glaciers are melting, permafrost is thawing, snow cover is decreasing, and the existence periods of lake ice are shortening, significantly impacting regional water resources, ecosystems, and human livelihoods. As HMA's cryosphere changes [2,3], cryospheric-related disasters have occurred, such as rockice avalanches [4,5], glacier collapses or detachments [6,7], debris flow [8], landslides [9], and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) [10,11]. Historical data demonstrate that there were 697 individual GLOFs that occurred in HMA from 1833 to 2022, resulting in 6906 fatalities [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remote Sensing and Modeling of the Cryosphere in High Mountain Asia: A Multidisciplinary Review

Ye,

Wang,

Liu

et al. 2024

Remote Sensing

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Over the past decades, the cryosphere has changed significantly in High Mountain Asia (HMA), leading to multiple natural hazards such as rock–ice avalanches, glacier collapse, debris flows, landslides, and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Monitoring cryosphere change and evaluating its hydrological effects are essential for studying climate change, the hydrological cycle, water resource management, and natural disaster mitigation and prevention. However, knowledge gaps, data uncertainties, and other substantial challenges limit comprehensive research in climate–cryosphere–hydrology–hazard systems. To address this, we provide an up-to-date, comprehensive, multidisciplinary review of remote sensing techniques in cryosphere studies, demonstrating primary methodologies for delineating glaciers and measuring geodetic glacier mass balance change, glacier thickness, glacier motion or ice velocity, snow extent and water equivalent, frozen ground or frozen soil, lake ice, and glacier-related hazards. The principal results and data achievements are summarized, including URL links for available products and related data platforms. We then describe the main challenges for cryosphere monitoring using satellite-based datasets. Among these challenges, the most significant limitations in accurate data inversion from remotely sensed data are attributed to the high uncertainties and inconsistent estimations due to rough terrain, the various techniques employed, data variability across the same regions (e.g., glacier mass balance change, snow depth retrieval, and the active layer thickness of frozen ground), and poor-quality optical images due to cloudy weather. The paucity of ground observations and validations with few long-term, continuous datasets also limits the utilization of satellite-based cryosphere studies and large-scale hydrological models. Lastly, we address potential breakthroughs in future studies, i.e., (1) outlining debris-covered glacier margins explicitly involving glacier areas in rough mountain shadows, (2) developing highly accurate snow depth retrieval methods by establishing a microwave emission model of snowpack in mountainous regions, (3) advancing techniques for subsurface complex freeze–thaw process observations from space, (4) filling knowledge gaps on scattering mechanisms varying with surface features (e.g., lake ice thickness and varying snow features on lake ice), and (5) improving and cross-verifying the data retrieval accuracy by combining different remote sensing techniques and physical models using machine learning methods and assimilation of multiple high-temporal-resolution datasets from multiple platforms. This comprehensive, multidisciplinary review highlights cryospheric studies incorporating spaceborne observations and hydrological models from diversified techniques/methodologies (e.g., multi-spectral optical data with thermal bands, SAR, InSAR, passive microwave, and altimetry), providing a valuable reference for what scientists have achieved in cryosphere change research and its hydrological effects on the Third Pole.

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Reconstruction and Characterisation of Past and the Most Recent Slope Failure Events at the 2021 Rock-Ice Avalanche Site in Chamoli, Indian Himalaya

Cited by 16 publications

References 78 publications

Geomorphic Process Chains in High‐Mountain Regions—A Review and Classification Approach for Natural Hazards Assessment

Geomorphic Process Chains in High‐Mountain Regions—A Review and Classification Approach for Natural Hazards Assessment

Geomorphic process chains in high-mountain regions - A review and classification approach for natural hazards assessment

Remote Sensing and Modeling of the Cryosphere in High Mountain Asia: A Multidisciplinary Review

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