Landslides in the Mailuu-Suu Valley, Kyrgyzstan—Hazards and Impacts

Mailuu-Suu is a former uranium mining area in Kyrgyzstan (Central Asia) at the northern border of the Fergana Basin. This region is particularly prone to landslide hazards and, during the last 50 years, has experienced severe landslide disasters in the vicinity of numerous nuclear waste tailing dams. Due to its critical situation, the Mailuu-Suu region was and still is the target area for several risk assessment projects. This paper provides a brief review of previous studies, past landslide events and a discussion on possible future risk scenarios. Various aspects of landslide hazard and related impacts in the Mailuu-Suu Valley are analyzed in detail: landslide susceptibility, historical evolution of landslide activity, size-frequency relationship, river damming and flooding as well as impacts on inhabited areas and nuclear waste storage zones. The study was carried out with standard remote sensing tools for the processing of satellite imagery and the construction of digital elevation models (DEMs). The processed inputs were combined on a GIS platform with digital landslide distribution maps of 1962, 1977, and 2003, digitized geological and geographic maps, and information from landslide monitoring and geophysical investigation. As a result, various types of landslide susceptibility maps based on conditional analysis (CA) are presented as well as predictions of future landslide activity and related damming potential and their possible impact on the population. For some risk scenarios, remediation and prevention measures are suggeste

Development of Petrov glacial-lake system (Tien Shan) and outburst risk assessment

Global climate warming causes an intensive melting and retreat of glaciers in the Tien Shan mountains. Melting water of glaciers causes overfilling of high mountain lakes. The increase of the surface and volume of the Petrov Lake accompanied with the decrease of stability of the dam represents an extremely dangerous situation that can produce a natural disaster. Failure can happen due to erosion, a buildup of water pressure, an earthquake or if a large enough portion of a glacier breaks off and massively displaces the waters in a glacial lake at its base. In case of the lake dam rupture, flooding of a disposal site of highly toxic tailing from the gold mine Kumtor is a threat. If this happens, the toxic waste containing cyanides would contaminate a large area in the Naryn (Syrdarya) river basin. Even if the flooding of the disposal site does not occur, the damage after lake dam fracture will be immense due to the glacial lake outburst flood may be a devastating mudslide. In order to prevent or reduce the risk of this event we recommend performing engineering surveys for the development and implementation of the project for the controlled reduction of water level in the Blue Bay of the Petrov Lake to a safe volume

Landslides in the Mailuu-Suu Valley, Kyrgyzstan - Hazards and impacts

Mailuu-Suu is a former uranium mining area in Kyrgyzstan (Central Asia) at the northern border of the Fergana Basin. This region is particularly prone to landslide hazards and, during the last 50 years, has experienced severe landslide disasters in the vicinity of numerous nuclear waste tailing dams. Due to its critical situation, the Mailuu-Suu region was and still is the target area for several risk assessment projects. This paper provides a brief review of previous studies, past landslide events and a discussion on possible future risk scenarios. Various aspects of landslide hazard and related impacts in the Mailuu-Suu Valley are analyzed in detail: landslide susceptibility, historical evolution of landslide activity, size-frequency relationship, river damming and flooding as well as impacts on inhabited areas and nuclear waste storage zones. The study was carried out with standard remote sensing tools for the processing of satellite imagery and the construction of digital elevation models (DEMs). The processed inputs were combined on a GIS platform with digital landslide distribution maps of 1962, 1977, and 2003, digitized geological and geographic maps, and information from landslide monitoring and geophysical investigation. As a result, various types of landslide susceptibility maps based on conditional analysis (CA) are presented as well as predictions of future landslide activity and related damming potential and their possible impact on the population. For some risk scenarios, remediation and prevention measures are suggested

Tien Shan geohazards database: Earthquakes and landslides

In this paper we present new and review already existing landslide and earthquake data for a large part of the Tien Shan, Central Asia. For the same area, only partial databases for sub-regions have been presented previously. They were compiled and new data were added to fill the gaps between the databases. Major new inputs are products of the Central Asia Seismic Risk Initiative (CASRI): a tentative digital map of active faults (even with indication of characteristic or possible maximum magnitude) and the earthquake catalogue of Central Asia until 2009 that was now updated with USGS data (to May 2014). The new compiled landslide inventory contains existing records of 1600 previously mapped mass movements and more than 1800 new landslide data. Considering presently available seismo-tectonic and landslide data, a target region of 1200 km (E–W) by 600 km (N–S) was defined for the production of more or less continuous geohazards information. This target region includes the entire Kyrgyz Tien Shan, the South-Western Tien Shan in Tajikistan, the Fergana Basin (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) as well as the Western part in Uzbekistan, the North-Easternmost part in Kazakhstan and a small part of the Eastern Chinese Tien Shan (for the zones outside Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, only limited information was available and compiled)..

Эволюция ледниково-озёрного комплекса Петрова (Тянь-Шань) и оценка риска его прорывоопасности

Global climate warming causes an intensive melting and retreat of glaciers in the Tien Shan mountains. Melting water of glaciers causes overfilling of high mountain lakes. The increase of the surface and volume of the Petrov Lake accompanied with the decrease of stability of the dam represents an extremely dangerous situation that can produce a natural disaster. Failure can happen due to erosion, a buildup of water pressure, an earthquake or if a large enough portion of a glacier breaks off and massively displaces the waters in a glacial lake at its base. In case of the lake dam rupture, flooding of a disposal site of highly toxic tailing from the gold mine Kumtor is a threat. If this happens, the toxic waste containing cyanides would contaminate a large area in the Naryn (Syrdarya) river basin. Even if the flooding of the disposal site does not occur, the damage after lake dam fracture will be immense due to the glacial lake outburst flood may be a devastating mudslide. In order to prevent or reduce the risk of this event we recommend performing engineering surveys for the development and implementation of the project for the controlled reduction of water level in the Blue Bay of the Petrov Lake to a safe volume.Рассматривается ледниково-моренно-озёрный комплекс Петрова в верховье р. Нарын (Тянь-Шань, Киргизия). Из-за ощутимого потепления климата высокогорья и вызванного им отступания ледника существенно увеличиваются размер и объём оз. Петрова, что повышает риск прорыва ледниково-моренной плотины озера. Это весьма опасно для расположенных ниже объектов хвостохранилища рудника Кумтор. Вероятность прорыва оз. Петрова и его последствий основывается на многофакторном анализе для наиболее опасных сценариев – возникновения внутриморенного канала стока и трансформации волны прорыва в селевой поток

A new classification of earthquake-induced landslide event sizes based on seismotectonic, topographic, climatic and geologic factors

Background This paper reviews the classical and some particular factors contributing to earthquake-triggered landslide activity. This analysis should help predict more accurately landslide event sizes, both in terms of potential numbers and affected area. It also highlights that some occurrences, especially those very far from the hypocentre/activated fault, cannot be predicted by state-of-the-art methods. Particular attention will be paid to the effects of deep focal earthquakes in Central Asia and to other extremely distant landslide activations in other regions of the world (e.g. Saguenay earthquake 1988, Canada). Results The classification of seismically induced landslides and the related ‘event sizes’ is based on five main factors: ‘Intensity’, ‘Fault factor’, ‘Topographic energy’, ‘Climatic background conditions’, ‘Lithological factor’. Most of these data were extracted from papers, but topographic inputs were checked by analyzing the affected region in Google Earth. The combination and relative weight of the factors was tested through comparison with well documented events and complemented by our studies of earthquake-triggered landslides in Central Asia. The highest relative weight (6) was attributed to the ‘Fault factor’; the other factors all received a smaller relative weight (2–4). The high weight of the ‘Fault factor’ (based on the location in/outside the mountain range, the fault type and length) is strongly constrained by the importance of the Wenchuan earthquake that, for example, triggered far more landslides in 2008 than the Nepal earthquake in 2015: the main difference is that the fault activated by the Wenchuan earthquake created an extensive surface rupture within the Longmenshan Range marked by a very high topographic energy while the one activated by the Nepal earthquake ruptured the surface in the frontal part of the Himalayas where the slopes are less steep and high. Finally, the calibrated factor combination was applied to almost 100 other earthquake events for which some landslide information was available. This comparison revealed the ability of the classification to provide a reasonable estimate of the number of triggered landslides and of the size of the affected area. According to this prediction, the most severe earthquake-triggered landslide event of the last one hundred years would actually be the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 followed by the 1950 Assam earthquake in India – considering that the dominating role of the Wenchuan earthquake data (including the availability of a complete landslide inventory) for the weighting of the factors strongly influences and may even bias this result. The strongest landslide impacts on human life in recent history were caused by the Haiyuan-Gansu earthquake in 1920 – ranked as third most severe event according to our classification: its size is due to a combination of high shaking intensity, an important ‘Fault factor’ and the extreme susceptibility of the regional loess cover to slope failure, while the surface morphology of the affected area is much smoother than the one affected by the Wenchuan 2008 or the Nepal 2015 earthquakes. Conclusions The main goal of the classification of earthquake-triggered landslide events is to help improve total seismic hazard assessment over short and longer terms. Considering the general performance of the classification-prediction, it can be seen that the prediction either fits or overestimates the known/observed number of triggered landslides for a series of earthquakes, while it often underestimates the size of the affected area. For several events (especially the older ones), the overestimation of the number of landslides can be partly explained by the incompleteness of the published catalogues. The underestimation of the extension of the area, however, is real – as some particularities cannot be taken into account by such a general approach: notably, we used the same seismic intensity attenuation for all events, while attenuation laws are dependent on regional tectonic and geological conditions. In this regard, it is likely that the far-distant triggering of landslides, e.g., by the 1988 Saguenay earthquake (and the related extreme extension of affected area) is due to a very low attenuation of seismic energy within the North American plate. Far-distant triggering of landslides in Central Asia can be explained by the susceptibility of slopes covered by thick soft soils to failure under the effect of low-frequency shaking induced by distant earthquakes, especially by the deep focal earthquakes in the Pamir – Hindukush seismic region. Such deep focal and high magnitude (> > 7) earthquakes are also found in Europe, first of all in the Vrancea region (Romania). For this area as well as for the South Tien Shan we computed possible landslide event sizes related to some future earthquake scenarios