Outburst floods in China: A review

Abstract

Outburst floods can have disastrous impacts on people, and are an important driving force in landscape change and have been studied widely on Earth. In China, although outburst floods have occurred frequently, there has been relatively little systematic investigation of the controlling factor. Here, we review outburst floods in China in terms of the characteristics, distribution, causes of dams and outburst floods. In terms of natural dams, landslides accounted for the majority (287 cases), followed by moraine dams (33 cases), which are mainly found on and around the Tibetan Plateau, and although other types (such as glacier and volcanic dams) were historically rare, many examples may be preserved in the geological record. In addition, there have been thousands of outburst floods from artificial-constructed dams, the majority of which were from small earth dams. The largest reliably recorded peak discharge for an outburst flood was 1.24 × 105 m3/s, which occurred in Yigong, Tibet. The peak discharge of the 1975 Banqiao collapse was 7.9 × 104 m3/s; the largest outburst flood of a man-made dam. Our recent investigations on the Yarlung Tsangpo in Southeast Tibet have identified gravel deposits that probably record megafloods and offer great potential for paleoflood analysis.