Monitoring variations of inland lakes in the arid region of Central Asia

doi:10.1007/s11707-012-0316-0

Front Earth Sci

0, Vol.

Issue () : 147-156 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-012-0316-0

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Monitoring variations of inland lakes in the arid region of Central Asia

Jie BAI, Xi CHEN(

), Liao YANG, Hui FANG

State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China

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Abstract

Inland lakes are the major surface water resource in the arid regions of Central Asia. Therefore, the surface area changes in inland lakes have been a sensitive indicator of climate changes and human activities, and have often been the focus of ecological and environmental research. This study aimed to monitor the changes in surface area of nine major lakes over a 32-year period. The water body was extracted from MSS images from the mid-1970s, TM images from the early 1990s, ETM+ images in the late 1990s, and TM images in 2007. The results indicated that the total surface area of these nine lakes had decreased over time to 50.38% of the area, from 91402.06 km² in 1975 to 46049.23 km² in 2007. As the surface area of lakes in the western part of Central Asia was larger than that in the eastern part, the shrinking trend of lake area was more significant in the west than in the east. There was a varied reduction of closed lakes in flat regions. The most substantial decrease was in the surface area of closed lakes in flat regions. Most significantly, the area of the Aral Sea was reduced by 75.7% from its original area in 1975. The area of alpine lakes remained relatively stable; the change in surface area was less than 0.7% during the period 1975–2007. The area change in opened lakes with outlets was notably different from the other two types. The area of Zaysan had increased sharply by 5.85%, and that of Bosten had decreased by 9.1%. Sasykkol had hardly any changes in this period. Due to global climate warming, vapor transfer to the south via westerly winds had been blocked, resulting in a decrease of much-needed precipitation in the western parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan between 1970 and 2000. The decrease in precipitation and the increase in water consumption for agricultural irrigation resulted in the decrease of river runoff. Consequently, the area of inland lakes in Central Asia shrank over the past 32 years.

Keywords Central Asia inland lake area change climate change

Corresponding Author(s): CHEN Xi,Email:chenxi@ms.xjb.ac.cn

Issue Date: 05 June 2012

Cite this article:

Jie BAI,Xi CHEN,Liao YANG, et al. Monitoring variations of inland lakes in the arid region of Central Asia[J]. Front Earth Sci, 0, (): 147-156.

URL:

https://academic.hep.com.cn/fesci/EN/10.1007/s11707-012-0316-0
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fesci/EN/Y0/V/I/147

Tab.1 The list of main lakes in Central Asia

Fig.1 Location of the study region, Central Asia

Fig.2 Flow chart depicting processes involved in extraction of lake areas information

Fig.3 Selected Landsat MSS (a, p159r28_2m19750812, p158r28_2m19770818), ETM+ (b, p147r028_7dk19991013), TM(c, p147r028_5tk20070808) and the results of water information extraction in Landsat MSS (d), ETM+ (e), TM (f).

Tab.2 Thirty-year changes in lake area in the study region based on satellite images in 1975, 1990, 1999, and 2007.

Fig.4 Dynamics of lake area changes in Central Asia based on time series Landsat satellite images from 1975, 1990, 1999, and 2007. Four periods of water body boundary were overlaid to show the variation in lake area, and inset histogram at the side of each lake showed surface area in 1972, 1990, 1999, and 2007. The linear graph at bottom right of the figure showed the percent area change of each lake during 1975–1990, 1990–1999, and 1999–2007

Fig.5 The spatial change of mean annual precipitation (mm/a) in Central Asia during 1970–2000 was defined by gauge-based precipitation analyses. Five meteorological stations at different elevations and precipitation zones are marked in the histogram. Vertical histograms showed the precipitation distribution at varying elevations, while horizontal ones showed the precipitation distribution at varying latitudes.

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