Journal Article

Changes in the area of inland lakes in arid regions of central Asia during the past 30 years

Fang, Hui, Chen, Xi, Bai, Jie, Li, Junli, Yang, Liao

2011

Overview

Inland lakes are major surface water resource in arid regions of Central Asia. The area changes in these lakes have been proved to be the results of regional climate changes and recent human activities. This study aimed at investigating the area variations of the nine major lakes in Central Asia over the last 30 years. Firstly, multi-temporal Landsat imagery in 1975, 1990, 1999, and 2007 were used to delineate lake extents automatically based on Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) threshold segmentation, then lake area variations were detailed in three decades and the mechanism of these changes was analyzed with meteorological data and hydrological data. The results indicated that the total surface areas of these nine lakes had decreased from 91,402.06 km 2 to 46,049.23 km 2 during 1975–2007, accounting for 49.62% of their original area of 1975. Tail-end lakes in flat areas had shrunk dramatically as they were induced by both climate changes and human impacts, while alpine lakes remained relatively stable due to the small precipitation variations. With different water usage of river outlets, the variations of open lakes were more flexible than those of other two types. According to comprehensive analyses, different types of inland lakes presented different trends of area changes under the background of global warming effects in Central Asia, which showed that the increased human activities had broken the balance of water cycles in this region.

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands,Springer,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Applied geophysics / Arid zones / Asia / Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution / Climate / Climate Change / Earth and Environmental Science / Earth sciences / Earth, ocean, space / Ecology / Ecotoxicology / Environment / Environmental Management / Environmental Monitoring / Exact sciences and technology / Fresh Water - analysis / Fresh Water - chemistry / Global warming / Hydrologic cycle / Hydrology / Hydrology. Hydrogeology / Internal geophysics / Irrigation / Lakes / Landsat / Monitoring/Environmental Analysis / Mountain lakes / Outlets / Precipitation / Regions / Remote sensing / Rivers / Studies / Surface water / Topography / Water Cycle / Water Pollutants, Chemical - analysis / Water resources / Water Supply - analysis / Water Supply - statistics & numerical data / Water use