Predicting glacial lake outburst susceptibility on the southern Tibetan Plateau with historical events and machine learning methods

Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) have inflicted varying degrees of damage on the ecological environment, infrastructure, and human life in the alpine regions. Consequently, effectively predicting GLOFs has emerged as a critical research focus for disaster prevention and mitigation. This study focuses on the southern Tibetan Plateau and systematically examines the distribution characteristics of glaciers and glacial lakes, which are key contributors to GLOFs, and reviews historical GLOF events and their developmental patterns using remote sensing imagery, geographic information systems (GIS) and machine learning techniques. Based on historical GLOF data, a susceptibility evaluation system was developed by integrating Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) algorithms. This system quantitatively assesses the susceptibility of each glacial lake within the study area. The findings indicate that the majority of historical GLOF events occurred between June and September, with triggering factors including icefalls, moraine dam destabilization, and heavy precipitation. Climate warming, particularly during the 1960s and from 1990 to 2020, has significantly influenced the frequency of GLOF events, revealing substantial spatial heterogeneity, glacial dependence, and climate sensitivity of GLOFs. The evaluation results show that approximately 17.4% of the glacial lakes are situated in high and very high susceptibility classes, with the highest susceptibility observed in the central and eastern sub-regions. The MLP model demonstrated slightly higher accuracy than the SVM model, with AUC (Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve) values of 0.96 and 0.90, respectively. This study offers a novel methodology and technical support for assessing the risk of glacial lake outbursts in the Tibetan Plateau and similar alpine mountain regions, providing a scientific basis for the development of disaster prevention and mitigation strategies.