Evidence for repeated failure of the giant Yigong landslide on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Field surveys and radiocarbon dating of detrital materials provide evidence that repeated landslides dammed the Yigong Tsangpo River ca. 3500 bc, 1300 bc, 1000 bc, 600 bc, and twice more recently. Together with historical slides in 1900 and 2000, these six older slides make for a total of eight known channel-damming landslide events at the same location over the past six millennia, indicating sub-millennia recurrence intervals over this time period. Together with the likely incomplete nature of the sedimentary record of past channel-damming episodes uncovered to date, our findings indicate late Holocene multi-century-scale recurrence intervals for large landslides at this location. Hence, the riverbed at and immediately upstream of this location may have been inundated by sediment, and therefore not incising, for much of the post-glacial period. Together with the location of this landslide complex at the head of the major knickzone defining the fluvial edge of the Tibetan Plateau, our findings support the hypothesis that repeated glacial and landslide damming in this region inhibited headward propagation of river incision into the Tibetan Plateau.