The Precursory 3D Displacement Patterns and Their Implicit Collapse Mechanism of the Ice-Rock Avalanche Events Occurred in Sedongpu Basin Revealed by Optical and SAR Observations

Quantifying the kinematic evolution patterns of mountain glaciers near Yarlung Tsanpo River performs a major role in evaluating the glacial instability and the secondary disasters. For the Sedongpu Basin near the Yarlung Tsanpo River Valley, the dramatic geomorphic landscape variations triggered by the ice-rock avalanche events were visually identified as the dominant texture deficiencies in time-series optical images. To improve the image correlation quality broken by these image texture deficiencies, the Landsat-8/Sentinel-2 optical images were divided into different groups, then a stepwise combination strategy was innovatively proposed to derive the glacier time-series displacement velocities in different temporal stages. The standard deviations (STD) of the optical measurements in the stable area maintained around 0.04 m/yr for the normalized displacement velocity and maintained from 0.6 to 1.7 m for the cumulative displacement time series. The obvious variations in glacier displacement velocity were identified before each collapse event. Subsequently, the offset-tracking procedures were performed on 7 Sentinel-1A Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images to acquire the range and azimuth displacement velocities. To better reveal the dynamic mechanism of the glacier activity, the three-dimensional (3D) glacial displacement velocity was also derived by using optical and SAR results. The precipitation, temperature, and seismic activities were assumed as the main triggering factors of controlling the glacial dynamic mechanism and final collapse events. Additionally, the dynamic mechanism of the active glaciers in Sedongpu Basin conformed to a power law, which was limited by the changes of the internal stress friction force on the sliding base surface. The aim of this study is to shed a light on interpreting the precursory displacement patterns and their implicit failure mechanism of these ice-rock avalanche events with the conventional freely optical and SAR observations.

Automated summary

Quantifying the kinematic evolution patterns of mountain glaciers is crucial for assessing glacial instability and secondary disasters. In the Sedongpu Basin near the Yarlung Tsanpo River Valley, the dominant texture deficiencies caused by ice-rock avalanche events were visually identified. To improve image correlation quality, a stepwise combination strategy was used to derive glacier displacement velocities from Landsat-8/Sentinel-2 optical images. The displacement velocities varied significantly before each collapse event, and the dynamic mechanism of active glaciers followed a power law. This study sheds light on interpreting the precursory displacement patterns and failure mechanism of ice-rock avalanche events using optical and SAR observations.