Glacial lake outburst floods as drivers of fluvial erosion in the Himalaya
A sudden outburst of erosion
Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) are exactly what they sound like. The sudden emptying of a glacial lake in high-topography regions like the Himalaya can quickly destroy everything in its path. Cook et al. intercepted a GLOF in the Bhotekoshi and Sunkoshi river valleys in central Nepal as they were monitoring the region in the aftermath of the 2015 Gorkha earthquake. They found that a massive amount of erosion occurred during the outburst flood, which suggests that GLOFs may be the primary factor in landscape evolution for these regions.
Science, this issue p. 53
Abstract
Himalayan rivers are frequently hit by catastrophic floods that are caused by the failure of glacial lake and landslide dams; however, the dynamics and long-term impacts of such floods remain poorly understood. We present a comprehensive set of observations that capture the July 2016 glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in the Bhotekoshi/Sunkoshi River of Nepal. Seismic records of the flood provide new insights into GLOF mechanics and their ability to mobilize large boulders that otherwise prevent channel erosion. Because of this boulder mobilization, GLOF impacts far exceed those of the annual summer monsoon, and GLOFs may dominate fluvial erosion and channel-hillslope coupling many tens of kilometers downstream of glaciated areas. Long-term valley evolution in these regions may therefore be driven by GLOF frequency and magnitude, rather than by precipitation.
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Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
Figs. S1 to S12
Tables S1 to S6
Resources
File (aat4981_cook_sm.pdf)
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Science
Volume 362 | Issue 6410
5 October 2018
5 October 2018
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
This is an article distributed under the terms of the Science Journals Default License.
Submission history
Received: 6 March 2018
Accepted: 3 August 2018
Published in print: 5 October 2018
Acknowledgments
The field observatory is part of the GFZ HART project “Perturbations of Earth Surface Processes by Large Earthquakes.” Suspended sediment analyses were performed in the GFZ Section 5.1 SedLab. Hydrological data were provided by the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), Nepal. Fieldwork and logistics were supported B. Parajuli from the DHM and S. N. Sapkota and L. B. Adhikari from the Department of Mines and Geology, Nepal. B. Situala provided field logistics, observations, and equipment maintenance. Installation of the seismic network was coordinated by J. Turowski, with the assistance of O. Marc, A. Schöpa, A. Golly, and A. Beer. C. Brunello, P. Catarasso, A. Gajurel, S. Gallen, and M. Lupker provided field support and assistance. M. Dietze patiently provided training in the use of the R package eseis for seismic data analysis. Funding: Funding is from a GFZ HART grant, a Helmholtz Postdoc fellowship to C.A., and ANR grant 17-CE01-0008-01 to F.G. RapidEye satellite imagery is from RESA RapidEye Science Archive, facilitated by BlackBridge. Author contributions: K.L.C.: Field work, data analysis, conceptualization, and writing. C.A.: Field work, suspended sediment and hydrological analysis, conceptualization, and writing. F.G.: Conceptualization, seismic data analysis, and writing. B.R.A.: Field contribution and manuscript preparation. N.H.: Conceptualization and manuscript preparation. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All relevant data are available in the manuscript or supplementary materials or will be made available in the GFZ Research Data Repository (http://dataservices.gfz-potsdam.de/portal/).
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