Abstract
The Jiangjia Gully, which is located in Dongchuan District, Yunnan Province, China, is a watershed prone to debris flows and has long-term recorded data of debris-flow occurrence. However, the initiation mechanism has mainly been studied by experiments in this watershed. To further reveal debris-flow formation mechanism in the Jiangjia Gully, debris-flow activities in the initiation zone were observed with hand-held video cameras in the summer of 2016 and 2017. In these two years, six debris-flow events were triggered in Menqian Gully, a major tributary of the Jiangjia Gully, while debris-flow activities in some sub-watersheds of Menqian Gully were recorded with video cameras in four events. The video recording shows that landslides constituted an important source for sediment supply in debris flow. Some landslides directly evolved into debris flows, while the others released sediment into rills and channels, where debris flows were generated for sediment entrainment by water flow. Therefore, debris-flow occurrence in the Jiangjia Gully is influenced both by infiltration-dominated processes and by runoff-dominated processes. In addition, rainfall data from four gauges installed in Menqian Gully were analyzed using mean intensity (I), duration (D), peak 10-minute rainfall (R10min) and antecedent rainfall (AR) up to 15 days prior to peak 10-minute rainfall. It reveals that debris-flow triggering events can be discriminated from non-triggering events either by an I-D threshold or by an R10min-AR threshold. However, false alarms can be greatly reduced if these two kinds of thresholds are used together. Moreover, behaviors including intermittency of debris flow, variance in moisture content and volume among surges, and coalescence of multiple surges by temporary damming were observed, indicating the complexity of debris-flow initiation processes. These findings are expected to enhance our knowledge on debris-flow formation mechanism in regions with similar environmental settings.
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Acknowledgements
The authors sincerely appreciate the valuable comments from the anonymous reviewers. We are grateful to LI Xiaoyu, WEI Li, YANG Taiqiang, XIA Manyu, YANG Chaoping from Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and SHI Cetu, XU Tianbao, XU Cong from Chengdu University of Information Technology for their cooperation in field observation and survey. The Dongchuan Debris Flow Observation and Research Station, Chinese Academy of Sciences is acknowledged for rainfall and topographic data supply. This work is financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFD1100701), the Science and Technology Research and Development Program of China Railway (K2019G006), and the Chongqing Municipal Bureau of Land, Resources and Housing Administration (KJ-2021016).
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Yang, Hj., Zhang, Sj., Hu, Kh. et al. Field observation of debris-flow activities in the initiation area of the Jiangjia Gully, Yunnan Province, China. J. Mt. Sci. 19, 1602–1617 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-021-7292-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-021-7292-3