Thawing Hazards and Their Developing States along the Qinghai-Tibet Engineering Corridor

Zhanju Lin, Fujun Niu, Hua Liu, Jiahao Lu

In the proceedings of: GEO2010 Calgary: 63rd Canadian Geotechnical Conference & 6th Canadian Permafrost Conference

Session: T2-D

ABSTRACT: The thawing hazards (e.g. thaw slumping, thermokarst pond, thawing settlement, and thawing groove, etc) were widely distributed in permafrost regions along the Qinghai-Tibet Engineering Corridor. Under the combined influences of the human activities and climatic warming, they have current been rapidly developing in failure scale. The total length of the corridor with the thaw slumping was already up to about 45km, the accumulated water area increased about ten times from 2007 to 2009, the section with the thawing settlement has accounted for about 56% of the whole length of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway, and thawing groove subsided about 7 to 8 cm/a.

RÉSUMÉ: Au long du corridor des travaux de Qinghai-Tibet se sont présentées des catastrophes fondues dans les régions de permafrost telles que le glissement fondu de terrain, le thermokarst fondu, la subsidence fondue, l'auge fondue, etc. Influencées à la fois par les activités et l'élévation climatique globale, ces catastrophes fondues s'aggravent en échelon de ravagement. Actuellement, la longueur totale du corridor avec les catastrophes fondues a déjà atteint 45 km ; la région de l'eau accumulée a augmenté de près de dix fois de 2007 à 2009 ; la section avec la subsidence fondue a déjà occupé 56% de la longueur totale de la Route Qinghai-Tibet ; et la subsidence de l'auge fondue a une vitesse de 7-8cm par an. 1 INTRODUCTION The Qinghai-Tibet Engineering Corridor (QTEC) from Golmud, Qinghai Province in the north, to Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Regions in the south, encompasses a

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