Avalanche activity and characteristics of its triggering factors in the western Tianshan Mountains, China

Snow avalanche is a serious threat to the safety of roads in alpine mountains. In the western Tianshan Mountains, large scale avalanches occur every year and affect road safety. There is an urgent need to identify the characteristics of triggering factors for avalanche activity in this region to imp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of mountain science 2018-07, Vol.15 (7), p.1397-1411
Main Authors: Hao, Jian-sheng, Huang, Fa-rong, Liu, Yang, Amobichukwu, Chukwudi Amanambu, Li, Lan-hai
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alpine environments
Avalanches
Climate
Data processing
Disaster management
Disasters
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Earthquakes
Ecology
Environment
Geography
Hazards
Landslides
Mountains
Probability theory
Regions
Roads
Roads & highways
Safety
Safety management
Seismic activity
Shear strength
Snow
Snow avalanches
Snow density
Snowfall
Snowpack
Temperature
Temperature effects
Traffic accidents & safety
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Summary:Snow avalanche is a serious threat to the safety of roads in alpine mountains. In the western Tianshan Mountains, large scale avalanches occur every year and affect road safety. There is an urgent need to identify the characteristics of triggering factors for avalanche activity in this region to improve road safety and the management of natural hazards. Based on the observation of avalanche activity along the national road G218 in the western Tianshan Mountains, avalanche event data in combination with meteorological, snowpack and earthquake data were collected and analyzed. The snow climate of the mountain range was examined using a recently developed snow climate classification scheme, and triggering conditions of snow avalanche in different snow climate regions were compared. The results show that snowfall is the most common triggering factor for a natural avalanche and there is high probability of avalanche release with snowfall exceeding 20.4 mm during a snowfall period. Consecutive rise in temperature within three days and daily mean temperature reaching 0.5°C in the following day imply a high probability of temperaturerise-triggered avalanche release. Earthquakes have a significant impact on the formation of large size avalanches in the area. For the period 2011–2017, five cases were identified as a consequence of earthquake with magnitudes of 3.3≤ML≤5.1 and source-to-site distances of 19~139 km. The Tianshan Mountains are characterized by a continental snow climate with lower snow density, lower snow shear strength and high proportion depth hoar, which explains that both the snowfall and temperature for triggering avalanche release in the continental snow climate of the Tianshan Mountains are lower than that in maritime snow climate and transitional snow climate regions. The findings help forecast avalanche release for mitigating avalanche disaster and assessing the risk of avalanche disaster.
ISSN:1672-6316
1993-0321
1008-2786
DOI:10.1007/s11629-018-4941-2