Geomorphological Hazards in High Mountain Areas

320 Pages·1998·18.15 MB·English

by  Daniel A. Cenderelli

Geomorphological Hazards in High Mountain Areas
The GeoJournal Library
Volume 46
Managing Editors: Herman van der Wusten, University of Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Olga Gritsai, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow,
Russia
Former Series Editor:
Wolf Tietze, Helmstedt, Germany
Editorial Board: Paul Claval, France
R. G. Crane, U.S.A.
Yehuda Gradus, Israel
Risto Laulajainen, Sweden
Gerd UHtig, Germany
Walther Manshard, Germany
Osamu Nishikawa, Japan
Peter Tyson, South Africa
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
Geomorphological
Hazards
in High Mountain Areas
edited by
JAN KALVODA
Charles University,
Faculty of Science,
prague, Czech Republic
and
CHARLES L. ROSENFELD
Oregon State University,
Corvallis, Oregon, U.S.A.
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-94-010-6200-8 ISBN 978-94-011-5228-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-5228-0
Printed an acid-free paper
AII Rights Reserved
© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originaily published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1998
No part 01 the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any lorm or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any inlormation storage and
retrieval system, without writlen permission lrom the copyright owner.
CONTENTS
Contents ...................................................................................................................... v
Dedication to Professor Clifford Embleton ................................................................. vii
Prologue ..................................................................................................................... ix
Sedimentology and clast orientation of deposits produced by glacial-lake
outbursts floods in the Mount Everest region, Nepal
Daniel A. Cenderelli, Ellen E. Wohl ........................................................................... 1
Catastrophic flood flushing of sediment, western Himalaya, Pakistan
John F Shroder, jr., M P. Bishop, R. Scheppy ......................................................... 27
Landslides and deserted places in the semi-arid environment of the
Inner Himalaya
Jussi Baade, Roland Mausbacher, Gunther A. Wagner,
Erwin Heine, Robert Kostka ...................................................................................... 49
Glacier-induced hazards as a consequence of glacigenic mountain
landscape, in particular glacier- and moraine dammed lake outbursts
and holocene debris production
Matthias Kuhle, Sigrid Meiners and Lasafam Iturrizaga ........................................... 63
Chaos theory of slides/mud flows in mountain areas.
Example: Xiaojiang Basin, NE Yunnan, China
Adrian E. Scheidegger .............................................................................................. 97
The salt weathering hazard in deserts
Andrew Goudie ........................................................................................................ 107
Impact of conversion of upland forest to tourism and agricultural land
uses in the Gunung Kinabalu Highlands, Sabah, Malaysia
Waidi Sinun, Ian Douglas ........................................................................................ 121
Landslides in the Rocky Mountains of Canada
D. M Cruden, X Q. Hu ........................................................................................... 133
Late Holocene sturzstroms in Glacier National Park, Montana, U.S.A.
David R. Butler, George P. Alalanson, Forrest D. Wilkerson
and Ginger L. Schmid .............................................................................................. 149
VI CONTENTS
Storn} induced mass-wasting in the Oregon Coast Range, U.S.A.
Charles L. Rosenfeld. ............................................................................................... 167
Natural hazards in relation to present stratovolcano deglaciation:
Popocatepetl and Citlatepetl, Mexico
David Palacios ........................................................................................................ 177
Andean landslide hazards
T. A. Blodgett, C. Blizard, B. L. lsacks ..................................................................... 211
Fluvial hazards in a steep land mountain environment, southern Bolivia
JejJWarburton, MarkMacklin, David Preston ......................................................... 229
Geomorphological response of neotectonic activity along the Cordillera
Blanca fault zone, Peru
Vit Vilimek, Marco Zapata Luyo .............................................................................. 245
Geomorphological hazards and risks in the High Tatra Mountains
Jan Kalvoda ............................................................................................................ 263
Geomorphologic hazards in a glaciated granitic massif: Sierra de
Gredos, Spain
David Palacios, Javier de Marcos ................................................... , ....................... 285
Index ....................................................................................................................... 309
DEDICATION TO PROFESSOR CLIFFORD EMBLETON
There are some men
who should have mountains
to bear their names to time.
-Leonard Cohen
This book brings to the community of science a current view of hazards associated
with the geomorphic processes in the mountain environment. Clifford Embleton. Pro
fessor of Geography at King's College, London, dedicated his life and considerable
talents to geomorphology and natural hazards research, especially in the glacial and
periglacial domain. Among his important works are Glacial and Periglacial Geomor
phology, with C.A.M. King, published in 1968 and expanded in 1975, Geomorphology
of Europe in 1984, and over 75 articles for scientific journals. Clifford was a highly
organized, meticulous, quiet contributor to many of the major initiatives of geomor
phology in the twenty-first century, including NASA's 'Geomorphology from Space'.
and the Study Group on Rapid Onset Geomorphological Processes of the International
Geographical Union. We are particularly indebted to Professor Embleton as the foun
der of the IGU's Commission on Natural Hazards Studies, which largely through his
vision has produced this volume.
Clifford Embleton was first and foremost a true field geomorphologist, a geogra
pher who absorbed his landscapes through the soles of his boots'. We, his friends and
colleagues, dedicate this work to his memory, knowing that his spirit leads us further
into the mountain environments that he loved. Clifford is survived by his wife. Dr.
Christine Embleton-Hamann, and three sons.
Charles L. Rosenfeld
Chairman, IGU Commission
on Natural Hazards Studies
Vtl
PROLOGUE
High mountains are often perceived as a landscape of dreams and rugged beauty
with wildly exalted rock masses humbly bowing their napes to the law of extinction.
They are also secrets uplifted from the depths of the planet, sharp waste lands battered
by gales, frost and burning sunshine, an ocean of stone cyclops lathered by glacial
masses. Every stone in the high mountains is evidence of the history of these scars of
the Earth. The fine cutting of fissures healed by quartz, dark nooks of glens and dazz
ling vertical walls -everything is full of tension, unrest and expectation. The certainty
of disintegration of seemingly intact rock plates and points of ridges, rocky slopes and,
in the valleys, stony carpets woven from the wrecks of courage and pride that shoot up
to the clouds, all compose an immutable rhythm. The history of stone, a second of
which equal as a generation of man, was fascinating in its austerity both at time of its
formation within the Earth's core and at the time when it was first touched by gusts of
wind, beams of light and the clinging of water drops, ice crystals and lichens. All as
pects of very high mountains bear clear testimony to an incessant cascade of energy,
spilling from one landform to another. Bygone landscapes are reflected in the present
ones, manifesting changes and mixing rise and fall, fertility and death in fantastic
chaos. Since long ago, humans have been measuring their curiosity, apprehension and
faith by the unreal curves of high mountains ridges and summits. They were crossed by
pilgrims and merchants, and mountain tribes learned to live in narrow valleys, inter
mountain basins and on mountain slopes. But only in the present second of the moun
tain history have strange people, of often very lonely regions, come thus far, driven by
vain and incomprehensible reasons, to climb mountain summits and to explore the
high mountain nature. Some of them pay with their lives for their audacity, but nothing
changes their determination.
High mountain regions have become a symbol of inaccessibility and of almost in
surmountable obstacles, a scene of mountaineering and scientific adventures. The high
mountain enviroument is at the same time transforming into an inexhaustible laborato
ry, in which the multiple and dynamic natural processes continue in the sort of extreme
conditions that are so well liked by Earth sciences' students. It is certainly useful to
marshal the research on high mountain regions into the rational structure of natural
sciences. But if we pass through the long and often bitter course of reasons and facts,
we often discover that logic and abstraction are bound, if not conditioned, by a subtle
thread of intuition and fantasy. Only with their help is it possible to grasp the substan
ce, if not directly the spirit, of the landforms, events and phenomena studied by Earth
sciences. In spite of the volume of findings during the last ten years, this look at the
high mountains nature is still well-founded. One of the wonders found in the extreme
conditions of high mountain deserts is the ecstasy of the unknown. In the chasm of our
own ignorance and weariness we are forced to wander through the monolithic temples
of mountains, admiring the profuse riches of landforms, events and phenomena. To see
certainly does not mean to understand. The deeper we penetrate into the natural pro
cesses of high mountains, the richer is the mosaic of their structure and the more
difficult their explication.
IX
x PROLOGUE
The research profession has very strict and purposeful criteria for theoretical appro
aches and experimental methods of research work. Maybe for that reason we pay very
little attention to the aesthetic values ofthe world in which we live, to efforts of mutual
understanding and more to tlle search for and the evaluation of the beauty of the laws
of natural phenomena and processes which we try to grasp, at least to a certain degree.
They are definitely essential aspects of science and university work, which are the most
important aspects from the human viewpoint. At the same time, they may be suspensi
on bridges on the way to understanding such mysterious features of nature that we are
yet not able to even name.
Geomorphological hazards are part of a larger group of natural hazards, including
for instance floods, soil or water quality risks due to agricultural technologies, deserti
fication, sudden weather changes and wildfires. Natural hazards studies are also
essential for a better understanding of ecosystem protection and the relationship
between the environment and human health. The protection of people from natural
risks in high mountains areas requires an understanding of the nature of hazards phe
nomena. Therefore, research into basic geomorphological hazards in high mountains
could be understood not only as a set of case studies but, first of all, as a rare opportu
nity for the preparation of tlleoretical models and for the understanding of the general
architeeture of the origin of natural disasters. At present, a lot of international researeh
projeets are foeused on determining the extent to whieh tlle geodynamic proceses affe
cting the Earth's surface constrain land use and engineering works. It is also important
to estimate the range of the effeets of anthropogenous activities on ·the rate of natural
geodynamic processes. The monograph "Geomorphological Hazards in High Mounta
ins Areas" has been prepared within the long-term research programme of the
International Geographical Union Commission "Natural Hazards Studies"
(CONAHA). Noted specialists were asked to contribute manuscripts to the general
theme given by the title of this GeoJoumal Library volume. This was a sort of a sympo
sium by correspondence, which resulted in the selection of the most appropriate
manuscripts for our volume. It is interesting that given this freestyle correspondence,
together with the orientation and the experience of different authors, a certain concen
sus in opinions on a set of basic geomorphological hazards in high mountains areas
has developed. The manuscripts represented in the volume include selected regional
examples of research of volcanic and post-volcanic activity, active fault zones, ear
thquakes, as well as of landslides, rockfalls, avalanches, creep movements, intensive
weathering, erosion of soils and parent material, glacier thawing and surging, debris
flows, mud torrents, floods and man-made landforms changes.
Besides the co-editor Charles L. Rosenfeld, chairman of CONAHA, I was helped
during the compilation of the volume by several colleagues. Co-editorial work was
partly done during my research stay in Centre d'Etudes et Recherches Ecogeographi
ques (Universite Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg) in 1996, which has for several years been
the seat of the European Center on Geomorphological Hazards. The camera-ready
version of the manuscripts was prepared at the Department of Physical Geography and
Geoecology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, with the help of Dr.
Helena Svachova and Mgr. Jakub Langhammer. We would like to thank Charles Uni
versity and the Department of Culture and Science of the Czech Ministry of Foreign
PROLOGUE Xl
Affairs for their support. We are naturally very grateful to all the authors of the manu
scripts included in this monographical volume, as their research endeavours were
decisive for the realization of the volume.
The GeoJournal Library volume "Geomorphological Hazards in High Mountains
Areas" has been prepared with a view to the 28th International Geographical Congress
at the Hague (1996) and the 4th International Conference on Geomorphology at Bo
logna (1997). We would like to dedicate it to the 650th anniversary of Charles
University in Prague, founded on 7th of April 1348.
Jan Kalvoda
Faculty a/Science,
Charles University, Prague