User Engagement in Developing Use-Inspired Glacial Lake Outburst Flood Decision Support Tools in Juneau and the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska

Abstract

Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) significantly affect downstream communities in Alaska. Notably, GLOFs originating from Suicide Basin, adjacent to Mendenhall Glacier, have impacted populated areas in Juneau, Alaska since 2011. On the Kenai Peninsula, records of GLOFs from Snow Glacier date as far back as 1949, affecting downstream communities and infrastructure along the Kenai and Snow river systems. The US National Weather Service, US Geological Survey, and University of Alaska Southeast (for Suicide Basin) provide informational products to aid the public in monitoring both glacial dammed lakes as well as the ensuing GLOFs. This 2 year study (2018–2019) analyzed how communities affected by the aforementioned GLOFs utilize these various products. The participants in this project represented a variety of different sectors and backgrounds to capture a diverse set of perspectives and insights, including those of homeowners, emergency responders, tour operators, and staff at federal and state agencies. In addition, feedback and suggestions were collected from interviewees to facilitate improvements or modifications by the relevant entities to make the informational products more usable. Findings from this study were also used to inform changes to the US National Weather Service monitoring websites for both Suicide Basin and Snow Glacier. This paper’s findings on GLOF information use are relevant for other GLOF-affected communities, from both an information user and information developer perspective.

Progress and challenges in glacial lake outburst flood research (2017–2021): a research community perspective

“…Tens of individual GLOF events have been reported since 2017 in different parts of the world including the Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalaya (Byers et al, 2019;Yin et al, 2019;Khan et al, 2021;Maharjan et al, 2021;Muhammad et al, 2021), the Tien Shan (Dayirov and Narama, 2020), the Tibetan Plateau (Zheng et al, 2021b), the Tropical Andes (Vilca et al, 2021;Emmer et al, 2022), the Southern Andes (Anyia et al, 2020;Vandekerkhove et al, 2021), the European Alps (Troilo, 2021;Ogier et al, 2021;Stefaniak et al, 2021), Alaska (Kienholz et al, 2020;Abdel-Fattah et al, 2021), British Columbia (Geertsema et al, 2022), Greenland (Tomczyk et al, 2021) and Scandinavia (Andreassen et al, 2022). Recently, Veh et al (2022) compiled globally by far the most complete GLOF inventory (total of >2800 GLOFs until March 2022; available from http://glofs.geoecology.…”

“…Repeated GLOFs from ice-dammed lakes were documented for the Karakoram (e.g. Yin et al, 2019;Khan et al, 2021), Alaska (Kienholz et al, 2020;Abdel-Fattah et al, 2021), the Southern Andes (Anyia et al, 2020;Correas-Gonzalez et al, 2020;Vandekerkhove et al, 2021) and the European Alps (Stefaniak et al, 2021).…”

“…Observed trends and progress -Human dimensions are generally underrepresented in GLOF papers covered by WOS and Scopus databases, partially reflecting the publishing paradigm of individual disciplines (for instance, a tendency towards publishing books in the social science domain) -Recently increased focus on GLOF attribution to (anthropogenic) climate change (see Sect. 4.7), with natural scientists generally driving this research and only at times involving social science or humanities researchers (Harrison et al, 2018;Huggel et al, 2020a;Stuart-Smith et al, 2021) Identified challenges -Better consideration and appreciation of cultural and spiritual values of glacier lakes and high-mountain environments and local and indigenous knowledge in GLOF research (Lambert and Scott, 2019;Abdel-Fattah et al, 2021;Matti and Ögmundardóttir, 2021;Haeberli and Drenkhan, 2022) -More sustained, detailed work needed to understand diverse and intersecting drivers of risk and vulnerabilities in communities (Matti et al, 2022b;see Sect. 4.6) to reveal how societal variables making diverse populations vulnerable overall intertwine with GLOF risks (Carey et al, 2020) -The politics and cultures of GLOF risk management and responses are only partially understood and analysed (Moulton et al, 2021) -Linking GLOF occurrence patterns with anthropogenic climate change signal (Roe et al, 2021;see Sect.…”

A Geospatial Analysis-Based Method for Railway Route Selection in Marine Glaciers: A Case Study of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway Network

“…Byers [5] presented recent examples of glacier flood mechanisms in high mountains and compared flood mechanisms in different countries. GLOF events have been reported in many countries with glaciated mountain ranges; the affected areas include the Nepal Himalaya [6], the Himalayas of India, the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, Bhutan [7,8], the Peru, Bolivia [9], the Swiss Alps [10], and the Juneau and Kenai Peninsula regions of Alaska [11]. First, the movement of glaciers can cause soil instability, leading to landslides, rock falls, and erosion, which can pose a risk to engineering structures built nearby.…”

The Impact of Climate Change on Glacial Lake Outburst Floods

“…Moreover, GLOFs receive widespread attention. GLOFs occur in the eastern Himalayas (China), the Ganga Basin, the Alps, the Central Caucasus, and in Alaska [10][11][12][13][14].…”