The World Centre of Excellence (WCoE) on Landslide Risk Reduction entitled "Landslide risk assess... more The World Centre of Excellence (WCoE) on Landslide Risk Reduction entitled "Landslide risk assessment and development guidelines for effective risk reduction" (2014-2017) was designed to contribute to the risk reduction effort formulated in the Sendai Partnership initiative. Several research activities were developed and their results were presented to a broad public through a series of articles, informative web pages and documentary movies. The research focused on improving landslide hazard assessment in a variety of natural environments, including deep-seated as well as shallow landslides. Landslide hazard assessment was applied practically through development projects in Ethiopia and Peru. Within the scope of the WCoE we proposed and conducted two projects of the International Program on Landslides (IPL). One of them is dedicated to compilation and analysis of glacial lake outburst floods (Database of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs)-project No. 179) at the global level. This potentially highly damaging natural phenomenon combines characteristics offloods and debris flows and often also involves landslides in the initiation process. The other IPL project focuses on the main challenges of landslide risk reduction in the Czech Republic (Challenges for landslide hazard and risk management in "low risk" regions, Czech Republic, IPL project No. 197), which is a country with abundant landslide-related knowledge and rather low annual occurrence frequencies. Despite that, landslides cause considerable damage and financial losses, which often could be prevented if the available hazard information were to be used.
Despite recent research identifying a clear anthropogenic impact on glacier recession, the effect... more Despite recent research identifying a clear anthropogenic impact on glacier recession, the effect of recent climate change on glacier related hazards is at present unclear. Here we present the first global spatio temporal assessment of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) focusing explicitly on lake drainage following moraine dam failure. These floods occur as mountain glaciers recede and downwaste and many have an enormous impact on downstream communities and infrastructure. Our assessment of GLOFs associated with the collapse of moraine dammed lakes provides insights into the historical trends of GLOFs and their distributions under current and future global climate change. We observe a clear global increase in GLOF frequency and their regularity around 1930, which likely represents a lagged response to post Little Ice Age warming. Notably, we also show that GLOF frequency and their regularity-rather unexpectedly-has declined in recent decades even during a time of rapid glacier recession. Although previous studies have suggested that GLOFs will increase in response to climate warming and glacier recession, our global results demonstrate that this has not yet clearly happened. From assessment of the timing of climate forcing, lag times in glacier recession, lake formation and moraine dam failure, we predict increased GLOF frequencies during the next decades and into the 22 nd century.
An inventory of the lakes within the Cordillera Blanca of Peru was made based on manual analysis ... more An inventory of the lakes within the Cordillera Blanca of Peru was made based on manual analysis of high resolution optical images and was verified during field surveys. In total, 882 lakes were detected, classified and described by several qualitative and quantitative characteristics. The majority of the lakes were characterised as moraine-dammed lakes (35.2%), followed by bedrock-dammed lakes (31.3%), while ice-dammed and landslide-dammed lakes were quite rare with 3.5% and 2.6%, respectively. Two thirds of the lakes (66.5%) have a surface area b 10,000 m 2 and are classified as being small, while only 7.3% are classified as large lakes with an area N 100,000 m 2. The majority of the large lakes are characterised as moraine-dammed lakes (48.4%) and the share of landslide-dammed lakes is significantly increased to 12.4% in this class. In the 1950s, most lakes were situated in the elevation range of 4250-4600 a.s.l. (Concha, 1951), while 49.4% of the lakes are currently situated above 4600 m a.s.l. This elevational shift is considered to be a result of ongoing environmental change and glacier retreat within the Cordillera Blanca. By analysing multi-temporal aerial images covering the period from 1948 to 2013 it was shown that glacial lakes in already deglaciated catchments may persist for long periods of time without any areal change. It was also shown that glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) originated from morainedammed lakes in the earlier stages of glacier retreat (1940s and 1950s) and from bedrock-dammed lakes in later stages (recently); however, no clear trend was revealed regarding the starting elevation of GLOFs. The susceptibility of all of the large lakes (n = 64) to outburst floods was assessed. Monitoring of young proglacial lakes and large moraine-dammed lakes, systematic susceptibility reassessments considering potential future changes, and flood modelling are recommended.
Geografie. Sborník České geografické společnosti, 1993
Some morphotectonic features of the epicentral area are described in the paper. Field work result... more Some morphotectonic features of the epicentral area are described in the paper. Field work results fit well with the seismotectonical analysis of neighbouring seismic stations. KEY WORDS: earthquake-morphotectonic features-recent tectonic activity.
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Ber... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
The Sikkim Himalayan glaciers and glacial lakes are affected by climate change like other parts o... more The Sikkim Himalayan glaciers and glacial lakes are affected by climate change like other parts of the Himalayas. As a result of this climate variability in the Sikkim Himalaya, a detailed study of the Gurudongmar lake complex (GLC) evolution and outburst susceptibility assessment is required. Glacial lake volume estimation and lake outburst susceptibility assessment were carried out to reveal different characteristics for all four lakes (GL-1, GL-2, GL-3, and GL-4) from the lake complex. Each of these lakes has a moderate to very high potential to outburst. As the dam of GL-1 provides no retention capacity, there is a very high potential of a combined effect with the sudden failure of the moraine-dams of GL-2 or GL-3 located upstream. Temporal analysis of GLC using optical remote sensing data and in-field investigations revealed a rapidly increasing total lake area by ~74 ± 3%, with an expansion rate of +0.03 ± 0.002 km2 a−1 between 1962 and 2018 due to climate change and ongoing g...
The aim of this paper is to create a glacial lake inventory for the Cordillera Huayhuash in Peru ... more The aim of this paper is to create a glacial lake inventory for the Cordillera Huayhuash in Peru and to evaluate the susceptibility of lakes to the generation of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Using high-resolution satellite images, we undertook qualitative and quantitative analysis of lake type, characteristics and distribution, and placed our findings within the context of existing Peru-wide lake inventories. We also mapped and analyzed past GLOFs, revealing a total of 10 GLOFs and 4 ambiguous events, most of which have not been reported before. We found that past GLOFs usually occurred as a result of moraine dam breach during the proglacial stage of lake evolution. Further, we used our lake inventory to evaluate GLOF susceptibility of all lakes larger than 20,000 m2. Of 46 evaluated lakes, only two lakes (Lake Tsacra and Lake W014) are currently susceptible to generating a GLOF, which would most likely be through dam overtopping resulting from a flood originating in smalle...
Geoenvironmental Disasters - an open access journal of the International Consortium on Geo-disast... more Geoenvironmental Disasters - an open access journal of the International Consortium on Geo-disaster Reduction (ICGdR) - is being published since 2014. This contribution aims at characterising 115 papers published in the first five volumes of the journal (2014–2018) and outlining some future perspectives. It is shown what research topics (types of natural hazards and disasters) are a subject of published papers, what methods are employed to investigate them and what is the geographical focus. Further, it is shown who publishes research results in Geoenvironmental Disasters, international cooperation network and the impact of published papers. Based on these findings, we conclude that Geoenvironmental Disasters became established journal for disseminating results of research on diverse typers of natural disasters in various geographical environments accross the globe, and we opine that further advancement of the journal might be achieved by onward indexing efforts.
The current emphasis on the research of natural hazards and risks has been widely recognized and ... more The current emphasis on the research of natural hazards and risks has been widely recognized and possible mitigation of their effects is of crucial importance for the whole society. While many international activities concerning the risk management emerged during the last two decades and the international cooperation proved necessary in this field, the realm of geography still remained split to a certain extent into the research activities in physical and in social geography. Nevertheless, there is an obvious need of the cooperation of these two domains of geography. The paper introduces the significant contributions of both natural and social sciences into the research of the natural hazards and risks and stresses that the knowledge gained in both of these disciplines constitute a solid complex that can be used and applied in a particular case of a natural disaster.
Preface for the thematic issue Bglacial lake outburst floodsT he theme of glacial lake outburst f... more Preface for the thematic issue Bglacial lake outburst floodsT he theme of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) is not a very common topic in the Landslides journal, nevertheless several papers have already been published in the past (e.g. Vilímek et al. 2005; Breien et al. 2008; Bhakta et al. 2013; Tapas et al. 2015). Looking into the scientific literature worldwide, it is obvious that attention to GLOFs has recently risen strongly-see Fig. 2 in Emmer et al. (in this issue). This is one of the reasons why we now present a monothematic issue on glacial lake outburst floods for Landslides. GLOFs are rather complex phenomena-all of the causes and mechanisms of moraine-dammed failures have been analysed by Emmer and Cochachin (2013) for the regions of the Cordillera Blanca, the North American Cordillera and the Himalayas through a review of the scientific literature as well as some unpublished reports. There are several differences from region to region; however, certain types of landslides are the most common or the most important triggers. Due to this fact, we have prepared this monothematic issue where we can highlight the role of landslides in the origin and propagation of glacial lake outburst floods. There has recently been a large interest in the numerical simulation of cascading processes involving mass movements and lakes. Glacial lakes are often situated under unstable slopes and are therefore prone to impacts from rockfalls, ice-falls and landslides. This topic is addressed in Schaub et al. (this issue). Another study (Klimeš et al. This issue) focuses on landslides occurring directly in moraine deposits in the closest surroundings of a glacial lake, which can trigger impact waves responsible for the generation of glacial lake outburst floods. Evidence gathered in this study suggests that GLOFs triggered by landslides from moraines could probably be smaller than floods resulting from other types of slope processes (e.g. ice/rock avalanches). But this assumption has to be critically evaluated against the site-specific conditions of a given lake. Implications for glacier lake outburst hazard assessment in a changing climate are also discussed (Allen et al. This issue). They analyse hydrometeorological factors for slope saturation and runoff , pointing out the importance of hydrometeorological triggers for lake outbursts and debris flows in the Himalayas. A risk analysis and risk management strategy for debris flows and glacier lake outbursts are prepared by Frey et al. (this issue). This could be also considered as an example of an integrated risk management strategy in a data-scarce, remote mountain catchment. Glacial lake outburst floods have been studied in many regions across the world, including the Alps, the Andes, North America, Central Asia and the Himalayas, and an initial global summary of events has been compiled (Würmli 2012). This inventory shows that in many cases, important information on the preconditions of lake outbursts is unavailable. As a complete understanding of the process is crucial for hazard assessment, special emphasis should be placed on the description of all of the essential parameters involved in the process leading to outbursts (Vilímek et al. 2014). A global database could help us to close this gap. A unified database of glacial lake outburst floods has been created for analysis and future natural hazard evaluations (Emmer et al. This issue).
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Gmb... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Ber... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and related debris flows represent a significant threat in h... more Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and related debris flows represent a significant threat in high mountainous areas across the globe. It is necessary to quantify this threat so as to mitigate their catastrophic effects. Complete GLOF hazard assessment incorporates two phases: the probability of water release from a given glacial lake is estimated through lake and breach hazard assessment while the endangered areas are identified during downstream hazard assessment. This paper outlines a number of methods of lake and breach hazard assessment, which can be grouped into three categories: qualitative, of which we outline eight; semiquantitative, of which we outline two; and quantitative, of which we outline three. It is considered that five groups of critical parameters are essential for an accurate regionally focused hazard assessment method for moraine-dammed lakes in the Cordillera Blanca. These comprise the possibility of dynamic slope movements into the lake, the possibility of a flood wave from a lake situated upstream, the possibility of dam rupture following a large earthquake, the size of the dam freeboard (or ratio of dam freeboard), and a distinction between natural dams and those with remedial work. It is shown that none of the summarised methods uses all these criteria with, at most, three of the five considered by the outlined methods. A number of these methods were used on six selected moraine-dammed lakes in the Cordillera Blanca: lakes Quitacocha, Checquiacocha, Palcacocha, Llaca, Rajucolta, and Tararhua. The results have been compared and show that each method has certain advantages and disadvantages when used in this region. These methods demonstrate that the most hazardous lake is Lake Palcacocha.
A multidisciplinary approach has been adopted to study the slope movements and landscape evolutio... more A multidisciplinary approach has been adopted to study the slope movements and landscape evolution at the archaeological site of Machu Picchu and its immediate surroundings. The basic event in the paleogeomorphological evolution of the area was the large-scale slope movement, which destroyed the originally higher ridge between Mt. Machupicchu and Mt. Huaynapicchu. Within remnants of that primary deformation, several younger generations of slope movements occurred. The laboratory analyses of granitoids revealed highly-strained zones on the slopes of Mt. Machupicchu, which strongly affect the largest slope deformation. The borders of the largest slope deformation are structurally predisposed by the existence of fault zones. The majority of various types of slope movements on the so-called Front Slope (E facing) and Back Slope (W facing) are influenced by the alignment between topography and joints. Along with slope movements, fluvial erosion and tectonic disturbance of the rocks have been affecting the evolution of the landscape. A monitoring network for dilatometric and extensometric measurements was used to detect the present-day activity of rock displacements within the archaeological site. In addition to standard mapping of surface hydrogeological phenomena, eleven express slug tests were conducted to verify the infiltration potential of precipitation. The results of these surveys indicate that recent large-scale slope movement as suggested by some previous studies is doubtful, and the detected movements can be explained by individual movements of rock blocks or several other mechanisms including sinking of archaeological structures, subsurface erosion and annual changes in the water content of the soils.
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Ber... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
Background: The initial investigation analysed the complex Rampac Grande slope deformation from A... more Background: The initial investigation analysed the complex Rampac Grande slope deformation from April 2009 (Landslides 8(3):309-320, 2011). The primary research in 2009 also identified an unrealistic explanation (raw mineral exploration) of the triggering of the landslide and the intention of the local authorities (from the administration centre of Carhuaz) to take measures to minimize the possible future risk to the local population. We also examined the adaptation measures introduced by the local authorities to reduce the risk for the local community. Findings: Unstable landslide material has been left after the 2009 event in the sources and transportation zone and several blocks were described as being only in a temporarily stable state. Landslide propagation could also follow the already existing lateral tension cracks identified in 2009. Areas of reactivation from 2012 were localized and triggering precipitation was evaluated.
The World Centre of Excellence (WCoE) on Landslide Risk Reduction entitled "Landslide risk assess... more The World Centre of Excellence (WCoE) on Landslide Risk Reduction entitled "Landslide risk assessment and development guidelines for effective risk reduction" (2014-2017) was designed to contribute to the risk reduction effort formulated in the Sendai Partnership initiative. Several research activities were developed and their results were presented to a broad public through a series of articles, informative web pages and documentary movies. The research focused on improving landslide hazard assessment in a variety of natural environments, including deep-seated as well as shallow landslides. Landslide hazard assessment was applied practically through development projects in Ethiopia and Peru. Within the scope of the WCoE we proposed and conducted two projects of the International Program on Landslides (IPL). One of them is dedicated to compilation and analysis of glacial lake outburst floods (Database of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs)-project No. 179) at the global level. This potentially highly damaging natural phenomenon combines characteristics offloods and debris flows and often also involves landslides in the initiation process. The other IPL project focuses on the main challenges of landslide risk reduction in the Czech Republic (Challenges for landslide hazard and risk management in "low risk" regions, Czech Republic, IPL project No. 197), which is a country with abundant landslide-related knowledge and rather low annual occurrence frequencies. Despite that, landslides cause considerable damage and financial losses, which often could be prevented if the available hazard information were to be used.
Despite recent research identifying a clear anthropogenic impact on glacier recession, the effect... more Despite recent research identifying a clear anthropogenic impact on glacier recession, the effect of recent climate change on glacier related hazards is at present unclear. Here we present the first global spatio temporal assessment of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) focusing explicitly on lake drainage following moraine dam failure. These floods occur as mountain glaciers recede and downwaste and many have an enormous impact on downstream communities and infrastructure. Our assessment of GLOFs associated with the collapse of moraine dammed lakes provides insights into the historical trends of GLOFs and their distributions under current and future global climate change. We observe a clear global increase in GLOF frequency and their regularity around 1930, which likely represents a lagged response to post Little Ice Age warming. Notably, we also show that GLOF frequency and their regularity-rather unexpectedly-has declined in recent decades even during a time of rapid glacier recession. Although previous studies have suggested that GLOFs will increase in response to climate warming and glacier recession, our global results demonstrate that this has not yet clearly happened. From assessment of the timing of climate forcing, lag times in glacier recession, lake formation and moraine dam failure, we predict increased GLOF frequencies during the next decades and into the 22 nd century.
An inventory of the lakes within the Cordillera Blanca of Peru was made based on manual analysis ... more An inventory of the lakes within the Cordillera Blanca of Peru was made based on manual analysis of high resolution optical images and was verified during field surveys. In total, 882 lakes were detected, classified and described by several qualitative and quantitative characteristics. The majority of the lakes were characterised as moraine-dammed lakes (35.2%), followed by bedrock-dammed lakes (31.3%), while ice-dammed and landslide-dammed lakes were quite rare with 3.5% and 2.6%, respectively. Two thirds of the lakes (66.5%) have a surface area b 10,000 m 2 and are classified as being small, while only 7.3% are classified as large lakes with an area N 100,000 m 2. The majority of the large lakes are characterised as moraine-dammed lakes (48.4%) and the share of landslide-dammed lakes is significantly increased to 12.4% in this class. In the 1950s, most lakes were situated in the elevation range of 4250-4600 a.s.l. (Concha, 1951), while 49.4% of the lakes are currently situated above 4600 m a.s.l. This elevational shift is considered to be a result of ongoing environmental change and glacier retreat within the Cordillera Blanca. By analysing multi-temporal aerial images covering the period from 1948 to 2013 it was shown that glacial lakes in already deglaciated catchments may persist for long periods of time without any areal change. It was also shown that glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) originated from morainedammed lakes in the earlier stages of glacier retreat (1940s and 1950s) and from bedrock-dammed lakes in later stages (recently); however, no clear trend was revealed regarding the starting elevation of GLOFs. The susceptibility of all of the large lakes (n = 64) to outburst floods was assessed. Monitoring of young proglacial lakes and large moraine-dammed lakes, systematic susceptibility reassessments considering potential future changes, and flood modelling are recommended.
Geografie. Sborník České geografické společnosti, 1993
Some morphotectonic features of the epicentral area are described in the paper. Field work result... more Some morphotectonic features of the epicentral area are described in the paper. Field work results fit well with the seismotectonical analysis of neighbouring seismic stations. KEY WORDS: earthquake-morphotectonic features-recent tectonic activity.
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Ber... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
The Sikkim Himalayan glaciers and glacial lakes are affected by climate change like other parts o... more The Sikkim Himalayan glaciers and glacial lakes are affected by climate change like other parts of the Himalayas. As a result of this climate variability in the Sikkim Himalaya, a detailed study of the Gurudongmar lake complex (GLC) evolution and outburst susceptibility assessment is required. Glacial lake volume estimation and lake outburst susceptibility assessment were carried out to reveal different characteristics for all four lakes (GL-1, GL-2, GL-3, and GL-4) from the lake complex. Each of these lakes has a moderate to very high potential to outburst. As the dam of GL-1 provides no retention capacity, there is a very high potential of a combined effect with the sudden failure of the moraine-dams of GL-2 or GL-3 located upstream. Temporal analysis of GLC using optical remote sensing data and in-field investigations revealed a rapidly increasing total lake area by ~74 ± 3%, with an expansion rate of +0.03 ± 0.002 km2 a−1 between 1962 and 2018 due to climate change and ongoing g...
The aim of this paper is to create a glacial lake inventory for the Cordillera Huayhuash in Peru ... more The aim of this paper is to create a glacial lake inventory for the Cordillera Huayhuash in Peru and to evaluate the susceptibility of lakes to the generation of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Using high-resolution satellite images, we undertook qualitative and quantitative analysis of lake type, characteristics and distribution, and placed our findings within the context of existing Peru-wide lake inventories. We also mapped and analyzed past GLOFs, revealing a total of 10 GLOFs and 4 ambiguous events, most of which have not been reported before. We found that past GLOFs usually occurred as a result of moraine dam breach during the proglacial stage of lake evolution. Further, we used our lake inventory to evaluate GLOF susceptibility of all lakes larger than 20,000 m2. Of 46 evaluated lakes, only two lakes (Lake Tsacra and Lake W014) are currently susceptible to generating a GLOF, which would most likely be through dam overtopping resulting from a flood originating in smalle...
Geoenvironmental Disasters - an open access journal of the International Consortium on Geo-disast... more Geoenvironmental Disasters - an open access journal of the International Consortium on Geo-disaster Reduction (ICGdR) - is being published since 2014. This contribution aims at characterising 115 papers published in the first five volumes of the journal (2014–2018) and outlining some future perspectives. It is shown what research topics (types of natural hazards and disasters) are a subject of published papers, what methods are employed to investigate them and what is the geographical focus. Further, it is shown who publishes research results in Geoenvironmental Disasters, international cooperation network and the impact of published papers. Based on these findings, we conclude that Geoenvironmental Disasters became established journal for disseminating results of research on diverse typers of natural disasters in various geographical environments accross the globe, and we opine that further advancement of the journal might be achieved by onward indexing efforts.
The current emphasis on the research of natural hazards and risks has been widely recognized and ... more The current emphasis on the research of natural hazards and risks has been widely recognized and possible mitigation of their effects is of crucial importance for the whole society. While many international activities concerning the risk management emerged during the last two decades and the international cooperation proved necessary in this field, the realm of geography still remained split to a certain extent into the research activities in physical and in social geography. Nevertheless, there is an obvious need of the cooperation of these two domains of geography. The paper introduces the significant contributions of both natural and social sciences into the research of the natural hazards and risks and stresses that the knowledge gained in both of these disciplines constitute a solid complex that can be used and applied in a particular case of a natural disaster.
Preface for the thematic issue Bglacial lake outburst floodsT he theme of glacial lake outburst f... more Preface for the thematic issue Bglacial lake outburst floodsT he theme of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) is not a very common topic in the Landslides journal, nevertheless several papers have already been published in the past (e.g. Vilímek et al. 2005; Breien et al. 2008; Bhakta et al. 2013; Tapas et al. 2015). Looking into the scientific literature worldwide, it is obvious that attention to GLOFs has recently risen strongly-see Fig. 2 in Emmer et al. (in this issue). This is one of the reasons why we now present a monothematic issue on glacial lake outburst floods for Landslides. GLOFs are rather complex phenomena-all of the causes and mechanisms of moraine-dammed failures have been analysed by Emmer and Cochachin (2013) for the regions of the Cordillera Blanca, the North American Cordillera and the Himalayas through a review of the scientific literature as well as some unpublished reports. There are several differences from region to region; however, certain types of landslides are the most common or the most important triggers. Due to this fact, we have prepared this monothematic issue where we can highlight the role of landslides in the origin and propagation of glacial lake outburst floods. There has recently been a large interest in the numerical simulation of cascading processes involving mass movements and lakes. Glacial lakes are often situated under unstable slopes and are therefore prone to impacts from rockfalls, ice-falls and landslides. This topic is addressed in Schaub et al. (this issue). Another study (Klimeš et al. This issue) focuses on landslides occurring directly in moraine deposits in the closest surroundings of a glacial lake, which can trigger impact waves responsible for the generation of glacial lake outburst floods. Evidence gathered in this study suggests that GLOFs triggered by landslides from moraines could probably be smaller than floods resulting from other types of slope processes (e.g. ice/rock avalanches). But this assumption has to be critically evaluated against the site-specific conditions of a given lake. Implications for glacier lake outburst hazard assessment in a changing climate are also discussed (Allen et al. This issue). They analyse hydrometeorological factors for slope saturation and runoff , pointing out the importance of hydrometeorological triggers for lake outbursts and debris flows in the Himalayas. A risk analysis and risk management strategy for debris flows and glacier lake outbursts are prepared by Frey et al. (this issue). This could be also considered as an example of an integrated risk management strategy in a data-scarce, remote mountain catchment. Glacial lake outburst floods have been studied in many regions across the world, including the Alps, the Andes, North America, Central Asia and the Himalayas, and an initial global summary of events has been compiled (Würmli 2012). This inventory shows that in many cases, important information on the preconditions of lake outbursts is unavailable. As a complete understanding of the process is crucial for hazard assessment, special emphasis should be placed on the description of all of the essential parameters involved in the process leading to outbursts (Vilímek et al. 2014). A global database could help us to close this gap. A unified database of glacial lake outburst floods has been created for analysis and future natural hazard evaluations (Emmer et al. This issue).
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Gmb... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Ber... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and related debris flows represent a significant threat in h... more Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and related debris flows represent a significant threat in high mountainous areas across the globe. It is necessary to quantify this threat so as to mitigate their catastrophic effects. Complete GLOF hazard assessment incorporates two phases: the probability of water release from a given glacial lake is estimated through lake and breach hazard assessment while the endangered areas are identified during downstream hazard assessment. This paper outlines a number of methods of lake and breach hazard assessment, which can be grouped into three categories: qualitative, of which we outline eight; semiquantitative, of which we outline two; and quantitative, of which we outline three. It is considered that five groups of critical parameters are essential for an accurate regionally focused hazard assessment method for moraine-dammed lakes in the Cordillera Blanca. These comprise the possibility of dynamic slope movements into the lake, the possibility of a flood wave from a lake situated upstream, the possibility of dam rupture following a large earthquake, the size of the dam freeboard (or ratio of dam freeboard), and a distinction between natural dams and those with remedial work. It is shown that none of the summarised methods uses all these criteria with, at most, three of the five considered by the outlined methods. A number of these methods were used on six selected moraine-dammed lakes in the Cordillera Blanca: lakes Quitacocha, Checquiacocha, Palcacocha, Llaca, Rajucolta, and Tararhua. The results have been compared and show that each method has certain advantages and disadvantages when used in this region. These methods demonstrate that the most hazardous lake is Lake Palcacocha.
A multidisciplinary approach has been adopted to study the slope movements and landscape evolutio... more A multidisciplinary approach has been adopted to study the slope movements and landscape evolution at the archaeological site of Machu Picchu and its immediate surroundings. The basic event in the paleogeomorphological evolution of the area was the large-scale slope movement, which destroyed the originally higher ridge between Mt. Machupicchu and Mt. Huaynapicchu. Within remnants of that primary deformation, several younger generations of slope movements occurred. The laboratory analyses of granitoids revealed highly-strained zones on the slopes of Mt. Machupicchu, which strongly affect the largest slope deformation. The borders of the largest slope deformation are structurally predisposed by the existence of fault zones. The majority of various types of slope movements on the so-called Front Slope (E facing) and Back Slope (W facing) are influenced by the alignment between topography and joints. Along with slope movements, fluvial erosion and tectonic disturbance of the rocks have been affecting the evolution of the landscape. A monitoring network for dilatometric and extensometric measurements was used to detect the present-day activity of rock displacements within the archaeological site. In addition to standard mapping of surface hydrogeological phenomena, eleven express slug tests were conducted to verify the infiltration potential of precipitation. The results of these surveys indicate that recent large-scale slope movement as suggested by some previous studies is doubtful, and the detected movements can be explained by individual movements of rock blocks or several other mechanisms including sinking of archaeological structures, subsurface erosion and annual changes in the water content of the soils.
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Ber... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
Background: The initial investigation analysed the complex Rampac Grande slope deformation from A... more Background: The initial investigation analysed the complex Rampac Grande slope deformation from April 2009 (Landslides 8(3):309-320, 2011). The primary research in 2009 also identified an unrealistic explanation (raw mineral exploration) of the triggering of the landslide and the intention of the local authorities (from the administration centre of Carhuaz) to take measures to minimize the possible future risk to the local population. We also examined the adaptation measures introduced by the local authorities to reduce the risk for the local community. Findings: Unstable landslide material has been left after the 2009 event in the sources and transportation zone and several blocks were described as being only in a temporarily stable state. Landslide propagation could also follow the already existing lateral tension cracks identified in 2009. Areas of reactivation from 2012 were localized and triggering precipitation was evaluated.
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Papers by Vít Vilímek