Geological Environment and Disasters along railway line in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Taking ETM as the main remote sensing information and adopting the Digital Landslide Technique, geological environments and large scale disasters along the Qinghai-Tibet highway and railway line regions have been investigated. The region can be divided into six basic tectonic units, and each of them has a different Quaternary deposition and other rocks, and different tectonic characteristics, but all of them extend with EW and NWW tectonic and dense faults, and also with high intensity of recent tectonic movement mainly taking the uplifting style. Based on the different undulated characteristics, the regional landform can be divided into three sections, the north-up steep slope, middle-gentle plateau plane, and south-down slope. Large scale periglacial geographical phenomena, such as rock glacial, landslide, debris flow, block field, rock-flow, and moving sand dune, which have been correlated with high elevation and frozen soil environment, are the main geological disasters that may impact the Qinghai-Tibet highway and railway lines.