No abstract

Extensive lake shrinkages have been observed in the semi‐arid Mongolian Plateau over the past several decades, causing a great challenge to the local socio‐economic sustainability and ecological security. However, issue on the dominant drivers of this water loss has not been well addressed. In this work, variations in water area and water level of the Lake Dalinor during the period 1984–2018 were tracked using the satellite altimetry and Landsat images. Dominant drivers for the derived variations were then investigated based on the Standard Precipitation Evaporation Index (SPEI) analysis and the Vegetation Interface Processes model. Results showed that both the water area and water level displayed a two‐stage variation with a slightly increasing trend before 2000 and a drastic decline since 2000 (p < 0.01). The SPEI analysis revealed a close relationship between water level variations and the cumulative water anomalies at seasonal and annual scales. The model‐based attribution analysis suggested that climate change and anthropogenic impacts contributed 76.5% and 23.5% of the observed declining trend, respectively. Climate warming and drying dominated the water level decline since 2000, while the large‐scale conversion from the natural grassland to the seeded pasture might have accelerated this water loss process. This study confirmed the prominent impacts of climate warming and drying on the lake desiccation in the semi‐arid Mongolian Plateau and highlighted the gradually intensifying impacts of human activities such as grassland conversion on the lake water budget.