Glacial lake inventory and lake outburst potential in Uzbekistan

作者：Petrov Maxim A; Sabitov Timur Y^*; Tomashevskaya Irina G; Glazirin Gleb E; Chernomorets Sergey S; Savernyuk Elena A; Tutubalina Olga V; Petrakov Dmitriy A; Sokolov Leonid S; Dokukin Mikhail D; Mountrakis Giorgos; Ruiz Villanueva Virginia; Stoffel Markus^*

来源：Science of the Total Environment, 2017, 592: 228-242.

DOI：10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.03.068

• Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOF)
• Uzbekistan
• Mountain lakes
• Glacier shrinkage
• Outburst assessment
• Lakes inventory
• Debris flow
• Remote sensing
• GIS

Climate change has been shown to increase the number of mountain lakes across various mountain ranges in the World. In Central Asia, and in particular on the territory of Uzbekistan, a detailed assessment of glacier lakes and their evolution over time is, however lacking. For this reason we created the first detailed inventory of mountain lakes of Uzbekistan based on recent (2002-2014) satellite observations usingWorldView-2, SPOT5, and IKONOS imagery with a spatial resolution from 2 to 10 m. This record was complemented with data from field studies of the last 50 years. The previous data were mostly in the form of inventories of lakes, available in Soviet archives, and primarily included localized in-situ data. The inventory of mountain lakes presented here, by contrast, includes an overview of all lakes of the territory of Uzbekistan. Lakes were considered if they were located at altitudes above 1500 m and if lakes had an area exceeding 100 m(2). As in other mountain regions of the World, the ongoing increase of air temperatures has led to an increase in lake number and area. Moreover, the frequency and overall number of lake outburst events have been on the rise as well. Therefore, we also present the first outburst assessment with an updated version of well-known approaches considering local climate features and event histories. As a result, out of the 242 lakes identified on the territory of Uzbekistan, 15% are considered prone to outburst, 10% of these lakes have been assigned low outburst potential and the remainder of the lakes have an average level of outburst potential. We conclude that the distribution of lakes by elevation shows a significant influence on lake area and hazard potential. No significant differences, by contrast, exist between the distribution of lake area, outburst potential, and lake location with respect to glaciers by regions.

• 出版日期2017-8-15
• 单位中国科学院地质与地球物理研究所