Reconstruction of catastrophic outburst floods of the Diexi ancient landslide-dammed lake in the Upper Minjiang River, Eastern Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Landslide-dammed lake outburst floods (LLOFs) may pose serious safety threats to nearby residents and their livelihoods, as well as cause major damages to the downstream areas in mountainous regions. This study presents the Diexi ancient landslide-dammed lake (DALL), located along the Upper Minjiang River, in the eastern margins of the Tibetan Plateau. The DALL is known to have an estimated previous maximal lake area of 1.1 × 107 m2 and an impounded volume of 2.9 × 109 m3. At approximately 27 ka BP, the ancient landslide dam failed, and catastrophic LLOFs occurred. It was determined that the peak discharge of the Diexi ancient LLOFs could be reconstructed using regression, parametric, and boulder competence approaches. The reconstructed average maximum peak discharge was approximately 79,500 m3/s, with an estimated uncertainty bound of 70,000 to 90,000 m3/s. This indicated that the Diexi ancient LLOFs were the largest outburst floods to have occurred in the Upper Minjiang River Valley since the Late Pleistocene Period. The differences in the widths and slopes within the former and latter reaches of the dam indicated that the geomorphic influences on the river channel resulting from the DALL and its LLOFs have been present for tens of thousands of years. These findings were of major significance in deepening the understanding of the existence and disappearances of important river knickpoints on a time scale of tens of thousands of years.