Tibetan Plateau is one of the districts with the most susceptible geo-environments. The district is characterized by its complex geology, strong endogenic and exogenic geological processes as crustal uplift, high in-situ stresses, earthquakes, repeating ground freeze and thaw, intensive precipitation etc., frequent landslides and chained disasters. Landslides have become a serious problem affecting the construction of major engineering project as Tibet-Sichuan railway line and regional hydropower stations, and also menacing the safety of local residents and their living facilities. On October 10th and November 3rd, 2018, landslides, damming the upper reach of Jinsha River at Baige village, are two typical cases. However, for the research of major landslides in Tibetan Plateau, theoretically it’s not quite clear that how they happen and what is their catastrophic mechanism; technically it is still under development that how to effectively recognize and control the disasters in advance. That is, current theory and technique cannot provide efficient support for pre-disaster control and post-disaster relief works. The three-river area (Jinsha River, Lancang River and Nu River) is located on the southeast edge of Tibetan Plateau and is characterized by complex geology, strong endogenic and exogenic geological processes and frequent landslide disasters, making it selected as the key area for investigation. Multidisciplinary endeavor will be used in the investigation, starting from the genesis mechanism of landslides, revealing the evolution of the chained disasters, then suggesting techniques for early recognition and risk control of landslide disasters. Through solving the scientific problems of major landslides in Tibetan Plateau such as the coupling mechanism of endogenic and exogenic processes, the dynamic mechanism of the disaster and its chains, and the technical challenges as remote sensing-based early recognition and monitoring, kinematic process-based risk evaluation and control techniques, the project finally demonstrates the application of the above theory and techniques by typical case histories of disaster reduction.
