Glacial lake inventory and lake outburst potential in Uzbekistan

Maxim A Petrov; Timur Y Sabitov; Irina G Tomashevskaya; Gleb E Glazirin; Sergey S Chernomorets; Elena A Savernyuk; Olga V Tutubalina; Dmitriy A Petrakov; Leonid S Sokolov; Mikhail D Dokukin; Giorgos Mountrakis; Virginia Ruiz-Villanueva; Markus Stoffel

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.03.068

Glacial lake inventory and lake outburst potential in Uzbekistan

Sci Total Environ. 2017 Aug 15:592:228-242. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.03.068. Epub 2017 Mar 17.

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Glacial-geology lab, Olimlar St. 49, 100041 Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
² Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Glacial-geology lab, Olimlar St. 49, 100041 Tashkent, Uzbekistan; State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Baker 402, 13210 Syracuse, NY, USA. Electronic address: sabitov.ty@gmail.com.
³ Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Geography, 1 Leninskie Gory, 119991 Moscow, Russia.
⁴ High-Mountain Geophysical Institute, pr. Lenina, 2, 360030 Nalchik, Russia.
⁵ State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Baker 402, 13210 Syracuse, NY, USA.
⁶ Dendrolab.ch, Institute for Geological Sciences, Baltzerstrasse 1+3, CH-3012 Berne, Switzerland; Institute for Environmental Sciences, University of Geneva, 66 Bvd Carl Vogt, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland.
⁷ Dendrolab.ch, Institute for Geological Sciences, Baltzerstrasse 1+3, CH-3012 Berne, Switzerland; Institute for Environmental Sciences, University of Geneva, 66 Bvd Carl Vogt, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland; Department of Earth Sciences, 13 rue des Maraîchers, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland. Electronic address: markus.stoffel@unige.ch.

PMID: 28319710
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.03.068

Abstract

Climate change has been shown to increase the number of mountain lakes across various mountain ranges in the World. In Central Asia, and in particular on the territory of Uzbekistan, a detailed assessment of glacier lakes and their evolution over time is, however lacking. For this reason we created the first detailed inventory of mountain lakes of Uzbekistan based on recent (2002-2014) satellite observations using WorldView-2, SPOT5, and IKONOS imagery with a spatial resolution from 2 to 10m. This record was complemented with data from field studies of the last 50years. The previous data were mostly in the form of inventories of lakes, available in Soviet archives, and primarily included localized in-situ data. The inventory of mountain lakes presented here, by contrast, includes an overview of all lakes of the territory of Uzbekistan. Lakes were considered if they were located at altitudes above 1500m and if lakes had an area exceeding 100m². As in other mountain regions of the World, the ongoing increase of air temperatures has led to an increase in lake number and area. Moreover, the frequency and overall number of lake outburst events have been on the rise as well. Therefore, we also present the first outburst assessment with an updated version of well-known approaches considering local climate features and event histories. As a result, out of the 242 lakes identified on the territory of Uzbekistan, 15% are considered prone to outburst, 10% of these lakes have been assigned low outburst potential and the remainder of the lakes have an average level of outburst potential. We conclude that the distribution of lakes by elevation shows a significant influence on lake area and hazard potential. No significant differences, by contrast, exist between the distribution of lake area, outburst potential, and lake location with respect to glaciers by regions.

Keywords: Debris flow; GIS; Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOF); Glacier shrinkage; Lakes inventory; Mountain lakes; Outburst assessment; Remote sensing; Uzbekistan.