The status evaluation of the permafrost environment along the Chaida'er-Muli Railway in southern Qilian Mountains in northern Qinghai Province, China

• Main Authors: CAO Wei, SHENG Yu, CHOU Yaling, WU Jichun, LI Jing, WANG Shengting
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Permafrost environment; Press-state-response framework; Catastrophe theory; Chaida'er-Mu Railway; Environmental impact; permafrost
• Online Access: http://ir.imde.ac.cn/handle/131551/48535

Engineering construction has major influence on the permafrost environment. This paper analyzes the interaction between engineering construction and permafrost environment along the Chaidaer-Muli Railway (simply, CMR) based on the press-state-response (PSR) framework. The permafrost environmental system is divided into three subsystems, consisting of permafrost thermal stability, proneness to the freeze-thawing erosion and permafrost ecological fragility. Each subsystem considers its most important influencing factors. Catastrophe Progression Method (CPM) is applied to calculate the current environment condition along the railway. The result indicates that: (1) as far as the thermal stability is concerned, most sections along the CMR are mainly concentrated in rank Ⅲ (fair situation), and a few in Ⅱ (good situation) and Ⅳ (bad situation), respectively; (2) for the proneness to the freeze-thawing erosion, the entire railway route falls largely in rank Ⅱ(good situation); (3) along the CMR, the ecological fragility of the permafrost environment is in rank Ⅱ(good situation), or slightly fragile; (4) overall, the permafrost environments along the CMR are in rank Ⅲ (fair situation) or Ⅱ condition (good situation). In general, the permafrost environment along the CMR is fair. It is mainly because a series of active measures of protecting permafrost were taken for stabilizing the CMR foundation soils. On the one hand, we should try our best to minimize the influences that engineering activities have exerted on ecology and environment, on the other hand, the positive measures have made improvements to prevent the permafrost environment from deterioration.