Developmental Characteristics and Potential Disaster Mechanism of Rock Glaciers in the Middle Reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River

Rock glaciers are a type of ice-marginal landforms with creep-slip characteristics formed by gravity and freeze-thaw based on ice and rock mixtures, and they have a large distribution in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and Tianshan Mountains in China. Monitoring studies in recent years have found that a significant acceleration process of creep slip on the surface of rock glaciers has occurred under the influence of climate warming, and the risk of forming mudflows or landslides has increased. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a sensitive area of global warming, and the geological disasters caused by climate warming have received wide attention. In view of this, this paper analyzes and discusses the development characteristics and potential disaster mechanisms of rock glaciers on both sides of the Sangri-Jiacha Gorge in the middle reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River using field measurements, remote sensing interpretation and theoretical analysis. The results show that the formation and development of rock glaciers are related to the topography, climate and solar radiation of the nurturing environment, and that they are prone to form mudflows or landslides threatening the downstream under the effect of rising temperature, short-duration heavy rainfall or strong earthquakes, mainly manifested by the instability of the constituent materials of the downstream section of rock glaciers.