Developmental characteristics of an inverted trapezoidal glacial valley and its influencing factors in the Geladandong snowy mountain.

Glaciers are one of the most active erosional forces sculpting mountainous regions, and understanding the diversity of glacial valleys is a key to advancing knowledge of mountain evolution. 'Inverted trapezoidal' glacial valleys are an important type of glacial erosional landform, and research on their morphologic characteristics and causal mechanisms might contribute to a deeper comprehension of the variety of landforms formed by glacial erosion. In this paper, ALOS 12.5m DEM data and field geomorphologic surveys were used to quantitatively extract 171 transect parameters from 32 valleys in the study area and to quantitatively describe the morphologic characteristics of the inverted trapezoidal glacial valley transects based on the V-index model. The results show that the minimum V-index value for glacial valley cross-sections in the study area is 0.42, the maximum value is 0.86, and the mean value is 0.60. The most important factors influencing the diversity in the morphology of glacial valleys in the study area are the area of glacial action and climatic conditions. The formation of inverted trapezoidal glacial valleys may be attributed to the stable glacial action region of ice caps with gentle topography in Geladandong snow mountain. Research highlights: The minimum value of the V-index for glacial valley cross-sections in the study area was 0.42, the maximum value was 0.86, and the mean value was 0.60. The greatest number of cross-sections were concentrated in the 0.60 ~0.70 interval. The most important factor influencing the diversity in the morphology of glacial valleys in the study area are the area of glacial action and climatic conditions. The formation of inverted trapezoidal glacial valleys may be attributed to the stable glacial action region of ice caps with gentle topography in Geladandong snow mountain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]