The ongoing acceleration in rock glacier velocities concurrent with increasing air temperatures, and the widespread onset of rock glacier destabilization have reinforced the interest in rock glacier dynamics and in its coupling to the climate system. Despite the increasing number of studies investigating this phenomenon, our knowledge of both the fundamental mechanisms controlling rock glacier dynamics, and their long‐term behaviour at the regional scale remain limited. We present a general theory to investigate rock glacier dynamics, its spatial patterns and temporal trends at both regional and local scale. To this end, we combine a model to calculate rock glacier thickness with an empirical creep model for ice‐rich debris, in order to derive the Bulk Creep Factor (BCF), which allows to disentangle the two contributions to the surface velocities from (i) material properties and (ii) geometry. Thereafter, we provide two examples of possible applications of this approach at a regional and local scale.

中文翻译：

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基于原位和遥感观测的岩石冰川蠕变一般理论

不断增加的冰川温度和不断升高的气温伴随着冰川速度的不断提高，以及冰川冰川不稳定的广泛爆发，增强了人们对冰川冰川动力学及其与气候系统耦合的兴趣。尽管有越来越多的研究此现象的研究，但我们对控制岩石冰川动力学的基本机理及其在区域范围内的长期行为的认识仍然有限。我们提出了一个一般理论来研究岩石冰川动力学，其空间格局以及区域和地方尺度的时间趋势。为此，我们将计算冰川冰川厚度的模型与针对富含冰屑的碎屑的经验蠕变模型相结合，以得出体积蠕变因子（BCF），这样就可以从（i）材料特性和（ii）几何形状中解开对表面速度的两个贡献。此后，我们提供了在区域和本地范围内此方法可能应用的两个示例。