Changes in China’s lakes: climate and human impacts

Abstract

Lakes have played a critical role in providing water and ecosystem services for people and other organisms in China for millennia. However, accelerating climate change and economic boom have resulted in unprecedented changes in these valuable lakes. Using Landsat images covering the entity of the country, we explored the changes in China’s lakes and the associated driving forces over the last 30 years (i.e., mid-1980s to 2015). We discovered that China’s lakes have changed with divergent regional trends: in the sparsely populated Tibetan Plateau, lakes are abundant, and the lake area has increased dramatically from 38,596 km2 to 46,831 km2 (i.e., increased by 8235 km2, or 21.3%), whereas in the densely populated northern and eastern regions, lakes are relatively scarce, and the lake area has decreased from 36,659 km2 to 33,657 km2 (i.e., decreased by 3002 km2, or 8.2%). In particular, severe lake decreases occurred in the Mongolia-Xinjiang Plateau and the Eastern Plain (–2151 km2). Statistical analyses indicated that climate was the most important factor controlling lake changes in the Tibetan Plateau, the Yun-Gui Plateau and the Northeast Plain. However, the strength of climatic control on lake changes was low in the Eastern Plain and the Mongolia-Xinjiang Plateau, where human activities, e.g., impoldering, irrigation, and mining, have caused serious impacts on lakes. Further lake changes will exacerbate regional imbalances between lake resources and population distribution and thus may increase the risk of water resource crises in China.

Long-Term Dynamics of Different Surface Water Body Types and Their Possible Driving Factors in China

“…Several surface water datasets have been generated and used to document changes in specific water bodies, such as the Global Lakes and Wetlands Database (GLWD) [37], the global HydroLAKES database and the Global Reservoir and Dam Database (GRanD) [38,39]. China has also conducted several lake inventories [35,[40][41][42]. However, these global datasets and China's inventories are constructed from satellite images from a specific year or years and capture little of the temporal changes in water bodies; they thus can provide little insight into their causes and consequences.…”

Changes in China's water resources in the early 21st century

“…; Tao et al . ), and because such lakes hold massive amounts of water and are therefore more suitable for evaluating changes in TWS. We acquired Landsat images from the US Geological Survey (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov) for the summers of 2000 and 2016.…”

Century‐Scale Reconstruction of Water Storage Changes of the Largest Lake in the Inner Mongolia Plateau Using a Machine Learning Approach

“…Lake plays a crucial role in the global water cycle and ecological balance (Verpoorter et al., 2014). Under ongoing climate change and intensified human activities in the recent several decades, the area, water level, and storage of numerous lakes have experienced significant changes (Pickens et al., 2020; C. Song et al., 2014, 2020; S. Tao et al., 2020). Owing to remote sensing techniques, numerous studies focus on large‐scale research, which substantially contributes to revealing the characteristics of lake changes in different global regions (Pekel et al., 2016; Pickens et al., 2020; J. Wang et al., 2018; J. Zhu et al., 2020).…”

“…Under ongoing climate change and intensified human activities in the recent several decades, the area, water level, and storage of numerous lakes have experienced significant changes (Pickens et al, 2020;C. Song et al, 2014S. Tao et al, 2020).…”