Landslide distributions around glaciers in high mountains

Allan, Mark (2018) Landslide distributions around glaciers in high mountains. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

Landslides, hereafter referred to as slope failures, are key geomorphic processes in mountain basins. The slope failure response to de-glaciation represents an important but poorly understood feedback to climate change. This PhD study uses a high-resolution state-of-the-art photogrammetric approach to detect and quantify failures across slopes above and around five glaciers in the Mont Blanc massif; Glacier d’Argentière, Mer de Glace, Glacier de Bossons, Ghiacciaio del Miage and Pre de Bard, over a monitoring period of one year. The statistical distributions are examined by means of a probabilistic magnitude-frequency analysis, and spatial distributions are analysed using GIS. The 3D data are also used to examine the structural properties and stability of a recently de-glaciated rock-slope by means of an innovative approach to assigning a rock mass strength classification. The analysis yielded an extensive inventory of 900 failures ranging over several orders of magnitude in volume, of which 43 are primary (i.e. rock-slope failure) and 857 are secondary (i.e. sediment remobilisation). The majority of failure activity within the observation period have happened along the steep-sided sediment-mantled lateral moraines at both glaciated and de-glaciated sites, representing a significant volume of sediment input into the glacial/ fluvial system of 3.7×105

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