Glacier lake outburst floods (GLOF) susceptibility in the Boqu Basin in Tibetan Plateau

The glacial lake in the Boqu Basin in Tibetan Plateau has changed significantly in recent years due to global warming, seriously affecting the natural and social environments in downstream areas. We obtained the change characteristics of glacial lakes by analyzing remote sensing images and evaluated the outburst floods susceptibility of glacial lakes in the Boqu Basin by combining fuzzy mathematics and random forest methods. An empirical formula for glacial lake hazard evaluation was established based on a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation. The confusion matrix were used to assess the evaluation effect of each method. The conclusions were as follows: (1) Under the influence of climate warming, glaciers are retreating further from the glacial lakes, and the size of glaciers that can impact these lakes is shrinking. Geological conditions, such as steep slopes around the lakes, have replaced glacier tongues as the primary factors threatening the susceptibility of the glacial lakes; (2) Among the three evaluation methods, the empirical formula offers high calculation accuracy and is the most convenient to use, which provides an accuracy rate of 85.71% in susceptibility evaluation of the Boqu Basin glacial lake and can be applied to other areas in the rapid evaluation of the susceptibility of glacial lakes; (3) The impact analysis of the collapse shows that the collapse of the Galongco fault would cause large economic losses.