Glacier Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs)—Mapping the Hazard of a Threat to High Asia and Beyond - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 329

GIT-based GLOF Hazard Research in Times of Recent Gobal
Climate Change
Since the 1990s, climate change and the concomitant glacier recessions have
been causing an increasing number of continuously extending glacial lakes
in mountain areas round the world which are leading to an intensifi ed risk
of lake outbursts, both in High Asia and around the world. Consequently,
the body of scientifi c literature is increasing. In High Asia the majority of
the studies focused on the Himalaya (e.g., Richardson and Reynolds 2000,
Iwata et al. 2002, Ma et al. 2004, Bajracharya et al. 2007, Bolch et al. 2008,
Gardelle et al. 2011, Hewitt and Liu 2011) but a few studies are also available
for the Pamir (Mergili and Schneider 2011), the Tibetan mountains (Wang
et al. 2011, Ma et al. 2004), and the Tien Shan (Bolch et al. 2011a, Narama
et al. 2010). The increasing availability of suitable high-resolution satellite
imagery facilitated the investigation of the development of glacial lakes in
the remote mountainous areas (cf. Fig. 14.3). Special mention may be given
to the monograph prime-authored by Jack D. Ives about a quarter century
after his initially mentioned 1986 monograph about the GLOF hazards in
the Himalayan region (Ives et al. 2010), which actually served as the basis
of the report about glacial lakes and glacial lake outburst fl oods in Nepal
issued by ICIMOD (2011).
The more recent the literature, the more obvious became the interrelation
between glacier recession and glacial lake generation. To properly evaluate
hazards posed by alpine glacial lakes, systematic information must be
collected on lake types, dam characteristics, outburst mechanisms, down-
valley processes and possible cascades of processes (cf. Haeberli et al. 2010).
In a comprehensive article based on the initial work by Peters (2009)
and Bolch et al. (2011a) reported about the identifi cation of PDGLs and their
possible impact by means of remote sensing techniques using the northern
Figure 14.3. Termini of Imja Glacier showing also the occurrence of the Imja Lake based on
1970 Corona and 2007 Cartosat-1 images (Bolch et al. 2011b).