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Stability and Life Span of Landslide Dams in the Himalayas (India, Nepal) and the Qin Ling Mountains (China)

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Natural and Artificial Rockslide Dams

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences ((LNEARTH,volume 133))

Abstract

This paper attempts to work out the stability conditions of 20 landslide dams in the Indian and Nepal Himalayas as well as two in China. All of them formed lakes upstream by damming the main river. The categories of study areas that they created differ in their shape, their volume and composition of the deposited landslide material, as well as in the size and life span of their former dammed lakes. This representative group of case studies affords the opportunity to obtain new results on this frequent phenomenon with the conclusion that besides the so far well known parameters for the stability of lake-damming natural rock blockages, such as landslide mor-phology, volume of debris, composition of the material and lithology, additional factors influencing the mechanical behavior of the landslide material are most important: movement-type, shattering grade, secondary compaction, involved moraine material, size of the catchment area, climatic conditions and rates of sedimentation. Finally a simple diagram, which correlates the grain, boulder and block size of landslide material and the stability of a dam should help in determining whether a lake-damming landslide is stable or not.

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Acknowledgements

Field trips to India and Nepal were financially supported by the Austrian Science Foundation, Vienna (grant No. P 9433-Geo). The study in the Qin Ling Mountains was sponsored with a habilitation grant by the Foreign Office of the University of Salzburg and the Northwest University (Xibei Daxue) of Xi’an (China). The author is grateful to Prof. Jiading Wang, Prof. Naixi Ma and Prof. Zhousu Li for scientific discussions during the field work. Financial support for the field trip around the Annapurnas in autumn 2003 was provided by the Stiftungs- und Förderungsgesellschaft of the University of Salzburg. Analysis of the field data was done in the Department of Geography and Geology, Salzburg University as well as Erkudok© Institute/K-Hof Museums of Gmunden (Upper Austria). Last but not least, special thanks to the organizers of the Nato ARW 2004 in Bishkek for their invitation, Dr. Oliver Korup (formerly of SLF, Davos, Switzerland) and an anonymous reviewer for carefully checking the manuscript and inspiring comments.

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  1. Department of Geography and Geology, Erkudok© Institute in the K-Hof Museums Gmunden, Salzburg University, Gmunden, Austria

    J.T. Weidinger

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  1. J.T. Weidinger
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Earth & Environmental Sciences, Landslide Research Program, University of Waterloo, University Avenue W. 200, Waterloo, N2L 3G1, Ontario, Canada

    Stephen G. Evans

  2. Dept. Geophysics, Geological Survey of Norway, Trondheim, 7491, Norway

    Reginald L. Hermanns

  3. Institute of the Geospheres Dynamics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninskiy Avenue 38, Moscow, 119334, Russian Federation

    Alexander Strom

  4. Dipto. Scienze della Terra, Università Roma, La Sapienza, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, Roma, 00185, Italy

    Gabriele Scarascia-Mugnozza

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Weidinger, J. (2011). Stability and Life Span of Landslide Dams in the Himalayas (India, Nepal) and the Qin Ling Mountains (China). In: Evans, S., Hermanns, R., Strom, A., Scarascia-Mugnozza, G. (eds) Natural and Artificial Rockslide Dams. Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences, vol 133. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04764-0_8

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