Deglaciation and debris flow dynamics: how does the glacier retreat affect debris flow activity in High Mountain Asia?

Debris flows are fast-moving masses of rock, soil, and water, which occur in mountain areas all over the world. Debris flows achieve maximum discharges that are many times greater than those associated with floods and are therefore often hazardous to people and infrastructure. Contrary to the general expectations that climate change will increase the magnitude and frequency of the debris flows, recent assessments have shown that under certain conditions future climate may increase the sediment transport capacity, but could also favor a reduction of the sediment supply and, therefore, reduce debris-flow activity. The impact of glacier retreat together with future climate conditions on debris-flow catchments is not yet fully understood, but it is expected to increase due to uncovered glacial till, increased hillslope instabilities and an increase in peak rainfall intensities. We aim to quantify the effect of the changes in water availability (changes in precipitation regime, but also glacier meltwater) together with the subsequent landscape changes in climatically contrasting catchments in High Mountain Asia (HMA) on the frequency and magnitude of debris flows. We address it by further extending the sediment cascade model (SedCas), expanding the available hydrological response units to bedrock, vegetated and glaciated parts of the catchment. We further investigate (1) how sediment yield and debris flow magnitude-frequency change over time, and (2) how deglaciation and catchment greening (changes of land cover) affect debris flow activity for different climate regions across High Mountain Asia. We find that in the case study of sediment-unlimited catchments, from 1950 to 2022, glacier retreat increases the water supply. That, in combination with the warming temperatures (and therefore the change in the partitioning of the solid and liquid precipitation) and the decrease in number of extreme precipitation events, results in a decrease in the debris-flow activity. These preliminary results show that changes are not consistent across HMA and highly depend on the climatic regime and elevation. Our findings shed light on the debris flow and flood hazard in the data-scarce areas of HMA and highlight the importance of considering regional climate conditions for hazard assessment in addition to region-wide estimation of glacier retreat. The future development will investigate the sediment-limited conditions.