A lake data set for the Tibetan Plateau from the 1960s, 2005, and 2014

Wan, Wei; Long, Di; Hong, Yang; Ma, Yingzhao; Yuan, Yuan; Xiao, Pengfeng; Duan, Hongtao; Han, Zhuo Rachel; Gu, Xingfa

doi:10.1038/sdata.2016.39

Cited by 120 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 39 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In addition, more dense vegetation in Qinghai relative to that in Tibet can cause stronger evapotranspiration, thereby attenuating surface warming by altering the surface latent heat flux and sensible heat flux [50,51]. Furthermore, there is a higher percentage of glacial and lake surface area in Tibet than in Qinghai [52]. Under a warming climate, changes in glacier and snow cover altered the proportion of received shortwave radiation (surface albedo) and outgoing longwave radiation (surface emissivity), leading to a greater rate of warming in Tibet than in Qinghai [53][54][55][56].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influences of Climate Change and Human Activities on Vegetation Dynamics in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Grasslands occupy nearly three quarters of the land surface of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau (QTP) and play a critical role in regulating the ecological functions of the QTP. Ongoing climate change and human interference have greatly affected grasslands on the QTP. Differentiating human-induced and climate-driven vegetation changes is vital for both ecological understanding and the management of husbandry. In this study, we employed statistical analysis of annual records, various sources of remote sensing data, and an ecosystem process model to calculate the relative contribution of climate and human activities to vegetation vigor on the QTP. The temperature, precipitation and the intensity and spatial pattern of livestock grazing differed between the periods prior to and after the year 2000, which led to different vegetation dynamics. Overall, increased temperature and enhanced precipitation favored vegetation growth. However, their combined effects exhibited strong spatial heterogeneity. Specifically, increased temperature restrained vegetation growth in dry steppe regions during a period of slightly increasing precipitation from 1986 to 2000 and in meadow regions during a period of precipitation decline during 2000-2011, thereby making precipitation a dominant factor. An increase in precipitation tended to enhance vegetation growth in wet meadow regions during warm periods, and temperature was the limiting factor in Tibet during dry periods. The dominant role played by climate and human activities differed with location and targeted time period. Areas dominated by human activities are much smaller than those dominated by climate. The effects of grazing on grassland pasture were more obvious under unfavorable climate conditions than under suitable ones.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influences of Climate Change and Human Activities on Vegetation Dynamics in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the past few decades, lake area in the TP has been undergoing an obvious increase; this is the opposite of changes in other regions of China [Ma et al, 2010], Asia's plateaus [Zhang et al, 2017a], and other regions or drainage basins across the globe [Donchyts et al, 2016;Pekel et al, 2016]. Lake area changes in the TP has been examined using Landsat data with relatively long time spans (a decade or longer) [Ma et al, 2010;Song et al, 2013;Wan et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2014]. A global water-body mapping at annual scale between 1984 and 2015 is available [Pekel et al, 2016], but manual identification and removal of rivers, reservoirs, and wetland polygons are necessary [Messager et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2017b].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lake volume and groundwater storage variations in Tibetan Plateau's endorheic basin

Zhang

Yao

Shum

et al. 2017

Geophysical Research Letters

348

241

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Tibetan Plateau (TP), the highest and largest plateau in the world, with complex and competing cryospheric‐hydrologic‐geodynamic processes, is particularly sensitive to anthropogenic warming. The quantitative water mass budget in the TP is poorly known. Here we examine annual changes in lake area, level, and volume during 1970s–2015. We find that a complex pattern of lake volume changes during 1970s–2015: a slight decrease of −2.78 Gt yr−1 during 1970s–1995, followed by a rapid increase of 12.53 Gt yr−1 during 1996–2010, and then a recent deceleration (1.46 Gt yr−1) during 2011–2015. We then estimated the recent water mass budget for the Inner TP, 2003–2009, including changes in terrestrial water storage, lake volume, glacier mass, snow water equivalent (SWE), soil moisture, and permafrost. The dominant components of water mass budget, namely, changes in lake volume (7.72 ± 0.63 Gt yr−1) and groundwater storage (5.01 ± 1.59 Gt yr−1), increased at similar rates. We find that increased net precipitation contributes the majority of water supply (74%) for the lake volume increase, followed by glacier mass loss (13%), and ground ice melt due to permafrost degradation (12%). Other term such as SWE (1%) makes a relatively small contribution. These results suggest that the hydrologic cycle in the TP has intensified remarkably during recent decades.

show abstract

“…Over the past 82,000 years, there has been a good correlation between the shrinking of lakes in the TP and the weakening of the Asian monsoon [3]. In a global warming context, lake areas and water levels generally show an increasing trend, because of the increases in precipitation and glacier melt water that have occurred in the TP, while the lake ice-cover duration shows an overall decline [4][5][6][7]. Land surface temperature (LST) is the key factor regulating the exchange of energy and water in the air-lake interface [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Investigation of Ice Surface Albedo and Its Influence on the High-Altitude Lakes of the Tibetan Plateau

Lang

Lyu

et al. 2018

Remote Sensing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Most high-altitude lakes are more sensitive to global warming than the regional atmosphere. However, most existing climate models produce unrealistic surface temperatures on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) lakes, and few studies have focused on the influence of ice surface albedo on high-altitude lakes. Based on field albedo measurements, moderate resolution imaging spectrometer (MODIS) albedo products and numerical simulation, this study evaluates the ice albedo parameterization schemes in existing lake models and investigates the characteristics of the ice surface albedo in six typical TP lakes, as well as the influence of ice albedo error in the FLake model. Compared with observations, several ice albedo schemes all clearly overestimate the lake ice albedo by 0.26 to 0.66, while the average bias of MODIS albedo products is only 0.07. The MODIS-observed albedo of a snow-covered lake varies with the snow proportion, and the lake surface albedo in a snow-free state is approximately 0.15 during the frozen period. The MODIS-observed ice surface (snow-free) albedos are concentrated within the ranges of 0.14-0.16, 0.08-0.10 and 0.10-0.12 in Aksai Chin Lake, Nam Co Lake and Ngoring Lake, respectively. The simulated lake surface temperature is sensitive to variations in lake ice albedo especially in the spring and winter.

show abstract

A lake data set for the Tibetan Plateau from the 1960s, 2005, and 2014

Cited by 120 publications

References 39 publications

The Influences of Climate Change and Human Activities on Vegetation Dynamics in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

The Influences of Climate Change and Human Activities on Vegetation Dynamics in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Lake volume and groundwater storage variations in Tibetan Plateau's endorheic basin

An Investigation of Ice Surface Albedo and Its Influence on the High-Altitude Lakes of the Tibetan Plateau

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About