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A rapid loess mudflow triggered by the check dam failure in a bulldoze mountain area, Lanzhou, China

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Abstract

Urban expansion results in a large number of land creation projects in the Chinese Loess Plateau. This has strikingly catalyzed hilltops being cut and valleys or low lands being filled by bulldozed mountain. Meanwhile, a large number of check dams were built into the loess gully to store soil and water. This paper studied a case of check dam failure, which resulted in rapid loess mudflow in a bulldozed mountain area. To investigate kinematic characteristics of the mudflow and trigger mechanism of the dam failure, in situ feature measurements, physical property tests, triaxial tests, and groundwater simulations were carried out. The field investigation revealed that moisture content of the loess in the filled area was very high and that the dam failure was most likely due to groundwater seepage. The VS2DI simulation of the check dam showed that its material was over saturated due to moisture migration in it, which significantly affected its stability. The simulation results are consistent with those of the field investigation. Rapid mobility of the mudflow could be attributed to liquefaction of the loess behind the dams. Meanwhile, the movement velocities calculated from by in situ mud splash height are related to the deposited volume of the mobilized materials at corresponding sites.

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Acknowledgments

The authors’ special thanks go to the anonymous referee and the editor of this paper, whose valuable comments led to substantial improvement of this manuscript.

Funding

This study was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41790443 and 41525010), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YFC504702), the Opening Fund of State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection (No. SKLGP2016K020), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. lzujbky-2019-kb46).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MOE Key Laboratory of Mechanics on Disaster and Environment in Western China, Department of Geological Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Fanyu Zhang, Binbin Yan, Xiaoming Feng & Xishan Lin

  2. State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Hengxing Lan

  3. School of Geological Engineering and Geomatics, Chang’an University, Xi’an, 710064, China

    Hengxing Lan & Xinghua Zhu

  4. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2W2, Canada

    Chao Kang

  5. School of Physics and Electronic-Electrical Engineering, Ningxia University, Yinchuan, 750021, China

    Wenguo Ma

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  1. Fanyu Zhang
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  2. Binbin Yan
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  3. Xiaoming Feng
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  4. Hengxing Lan
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  5. Chao Kang
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  7. Xinghua Zhu
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Correspondence to Fanyu Zhang or Hengxing Lan.

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Zhang, F., Yan, B., Feng, X. et al. A rapid loess mudflow triggered by the check dam failure in a bulldoze mountain area, Lanzhou, China. Landslides 16, 1981–1992 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-019-01219-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-019-01219-2

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