High-resolution assessment of retrogressive thaw slump susceptibility in the Qinghai-Tibet Engineering Corridor

Under the rapidly warming climate in the Arctic and high mountain areas,permafrost is thawing,leading to various hazards at a global scale.One common permafrost hazard termed retrogressive thaw slump(RTS)occurs extensively in ice-rich permafrost areas.Understanding the spatial and temporal distributive features of RTSs in a changing climate is crucial to assessing the damage to infrastructure and decision-making.To this end,we used a machine learning-based model to investigate the environmental factors that could lead to RTS occurrence and create a susceptibility map for RTS along the Qinghai-Tibet Engineering Corridor(QTEC)at a local scale.The results indicate that extreme summer climate events(e.g.,maximum air temperature and rainfall)contributes the most to the RTS occurrence over the flat areas with fine-grained soils.The model predicts that 13%(ca.22,948 km^(2))of the QTEC falls into high to very high susceptibility categories under the current climate over the permafrost areas with mean annual ground temperature at 10 m depth ranging from-3 to-1℃.This study provides insights into the impacts of permafrost thaw on the stability of landscape,carbon stock,and infrastructure,and the results are of value for engineering planning and maintenance.

In-situ testing study on convection and temperature characteristics of a new crushed-rock slope embankment design in a permafrost region

For the purpose of enhancing air convection and controlling solar radiation, a new crushed-rock slope embankment design combined with a sun-shade measure is proposed. A newly designed embankment was constructed in the Tuotuohe section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway and a field-testing experiment was carried out to determine its convection and temperature characteristics. The results show that distinct air convection occurred in the crushed-rock layer of the new embankment, especially in cold seasons, which was enhanced when it flowed upwards along the slope. This preliminarily indicated that the new design of the embankment slope was good for reinforcing air convection in the crushed-rock layer. The frequent fluctuations of the convection speed and the environmental wind speed were in good agreement, suggesting that the convection in the crushed rock primarily came from the ambient wind. It was also preliminarily determined that the new embankment had a better cooling effect and sun-shade effect for decreasing the temperature of the embankment slope compared with a traditional crushed-rock slope embankment, and the mean temperature difference between them was up to 1.7 °C. The mean annual temperature at the bottom boundary of the crushed-rock layer was obviously lower than that at the top boundary, and heat flux calculation showed that the shallow soil beneath the embankment slope was weakly releasing heat, all of which indicated that the new embankment slope design was beneficial to the thermal stability of the embankment. This study is helpful in providing some references for improved engineering design and maintenance of roadbeds in permafrost regions.

Advances in studies on concrete durability and countermeasures against freezing-thawing effects

This paper is a meta-analysis of recent domestic and foreign research on freezing-thawing effects on concrete durability. The main theories on the mechanisms of freeze-thaw damage to concrete are introduced： the hydrostatic pressure theory, the osmotic pressure theory, the critical water saturation degree theory, the dual mechanism theory, and the micro-ice-crystal lens model theory. The influence laws of freezing-thawing on the mechanical properties of concrete are summarized, and countermeasures to improve concrete durability in freezing-thawing circumstances are presented. This work provides valuable references for future engineering constructions in cold regions.

Dating of two thermokarst lakes in Beiluhe Basin, Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Most of the thermokarst lakes are spread appreciably in Beiluhe Basin,Qinghai-Tibet Plateau,China,where ice-rich permafrost exists.Two typical thermokarst lakes with differing area and depth were examined to ascertain their age.We obtained lake-bottom samples of 50 cm length from lake BLH-A and 25 cm length from lake BLH-B.Environmental 137 Cs and 210 Pb and radiocarbon age dating techniques were applied to the 50 cm and 25 cm samples,respectively.The results indicate that the initiation of BLH-A is about 800-900 a B.P.,and approximately 1,450±30 a B.P.to 2,230±30 a B.P.for BLH-B.These results will provide scientific bases for sedimentological study and thermokarst activity in Beiluhe Basin.

多维地震下钢管混凝土柱-组合梁框架结构体系抗震性能分析

基于柱端拉筋对钢管混凝土柱、钢管混凝土柱-组合梁节点和钢管混凝土柱-组合梁平面框架结构抗震性能影响的试验研究成果,建立了钢管混凝土柱-组合梁空间框架结构动力时程分析的三维实体-壳单元模型,探讨了柱端拉筋和主梁加高等增强约束措施、削减钢梁跨中腹板高度的变截面组合梁以及多维地震波对结构抗震性能的影响规律,分析了不同地震波强度作用下该类组合框架结构的位移响应、轴压比时程曲线、应力-应变等曲线,以及结构塑性耗能分配机制、塑性铰形成与发展规律和结构刚度损伤演化规律等抗震性能指标。有限元计算结果表明:1)柱端拉筋和主梁加高等增强约束措施均能有效提升组合框架结构抗震性能而减小结构刚度损伤,且地震波强度越大作用效果越明显;相同地震波作用时,柱端拉筋增强约束措施比主梁加高增强约束措施更有效,而两种增强约束措施共同作用则能进一步提升组合结构的极限抗震能力。2)柱端拉筋增强约束措施能够降低钢管壁与混凝土间界面滑移,增强混凝土的耗能能力,降低钢管混凝土柱塑性耗能占比,提升钢梁塑性耗能占比,提升结构总塑性耗能;此外,柱端拉筋增强约束措施还可减少组合框架柱端塑性铰并增加梁端塑性铰的数量,延缓柱端“压铰”的出现,延长“压铰”向“拉铰”转变的过程。3)降低钢梁跨中腹板高度的变截面组合梁对框架结构抗震性能没有影响,采用该变截面组合梁的框架模型不仅能够满足结构基本功能要求,还可节省结构耗材、降低造价,进一步扩大建筑实用空间。4)与单向地震波作用相比,多维地震波作用下组合框架结构的极限抗震能力大幅下降,结构失效模式由剪切破坏转变为剪扭破坏。另外,三维地震波中竖向加速度对框架结构柱端轴压比有放大作用,而对楼层最大位移、层间位移角、塑性耗能和刚度损伤等方面则无明显影响。柱端拉筋增强约束措施对组合框架结构抗震性能仍有提升作用。

Automatic Identifcation of Thaw Slumps Based on Neural Network Methods and Thaw Slumping Susceptibility

Thaw slumping is a periglacial process that occurs on slopes in cold environments,where the ground becomes unstable and the surface slides downhill due to saturation with water during thawing.In this study,GaoFen-1 remote sensing and fused multi-source feature data were used to automatically map thaw slumping landforms in the Beilu River Basin of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau.The bi-directional cascade network structure was used to extract edges at diferent scales,where an individual layer was supervised by labeled edges at its specifc scale,rather than directly applying the same supervision to all convolutional neural network outputs.Additionally,we conducted a 5-year multi-scale feature analysis of small baseline subset interferometric synthetic aperture radar deformation,normalized diference vegetation index,and slope,among other features.Our study analyzed the performance and accuracy of three methods based on edge object supervised learning and three preconfgured neural networks,ResNet101,VGG16,and ResNet152.Through verifcation using site surveys and multi-data fusion results,we obtained the best ResNet101 model score of intersection over union of 0.85(overall accuracy of 84.59%).The value of intersection over union of the VGG and ResNet152 are 0.569 and 0.773,respectively.This work provides a new insight for the potential feasibility of applying the designed edge detection method to map diverse thaw slumping landforms in larger areas with high-resolution images.

Role of Suprapermafrost Groundwater Recharge in Dissolved Organic Carbon Dynamics of Thermokarst Lakes

0 INTRODUCTION The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC AR6)indicated that the global surface temperature had risen by approximately 1.09℃compared to the 1850-1900 average over the past decade(IPCC,2021).The warming rate of air temperature in polar and high-elevation permafrost regions was found to be about two times higher than the average global warming rate(Liu et al.,2023;Hu et al.,2021).