Can a dam type of an alpine lake be derived from lake geometry? A negative result

0542595 - ÚVGZ 2022 RIV CN eng J - Journal Article
Emmer, Adam - Cuřín, Vojtěch
Can a dam type of an alpine lake be derived from lake geometry? A negative result.
Journal of Mountain Science. Roč. 18, č. 3 (2021), s. 614-621. ISSN 1672-6316. E-ISSN 1993-0321
R&D Projects: GA MŠMT(CZ) LO1415
Research Infrastructure: CzeCOS III - 90123
Institutional support: RVO:86652079
Keywords : glacial lake * cordillera blanca * outburst floods * inventory * susceptibility * classification * hazards * Alpine lake * High mountain lake * GLOFs * Glacial lake * Moraine-dammed * Bedrock-dammed * Negative result * Cordillera Blanca
OECD category: Environmental sciences (social aspects to be 5.7)
Impact factor: 2.371, year: 2021
Method of publishing: Open access
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11629-020-6003-9.pdf

Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) represent one of the most serious hazard and risk in deglaciating high mountain regions worldwide and the need for GLOF hazard and risk assessment is apparent. As a consequence, numerous region- and nation-wide GLOF assessment studies have been published recently. These studies cover large areas and consider hundreds to thousands of lakes, prioritizing the hazard posed by them. Clearly, certain simplification is required for executing such studies, often resulting in neglecting qualitative characteristics which would need manual assignment. Different lake dam types (e.g., bedrock-dammed, moraine-dammed) are often not distinguished, despite they control GLOF mechanism (dam overtopping/dam breach) and thus GLOF magnitude. In this study, we explore the potential of easily measurable quantitative characteristics and four ratios to approximate the lake dam type. Our dataset of 851 lakes of the Cordillera Blanca suggests that while variances and means of these characteristics of individual lake types differ significantly (F-test, t-test), value distribution of different geometrical properties can't be used for the originally proposed purpose along the spectra. The only promising results are obtained for extreme values (selected bins) of the ratios. For instance, the low width to length ratio indicates likely moraine-dammed lake while the high value of ratio indicating round-shape of the lake indicates increased likelihood of bedrock-dammed lake. Overall, we report a negative result of our experiment since there are negligible differences of relative frequencies in most of the bins along the spectra.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0319981