Asia's high plateaus are sensitive to climate change and have been experiencing rapid warming over the past few decades. We found 99 new lakes and extensive lake expansion on the Tibetan Plateau during the last four decades, 1970–2013, due to increased precipitation and cryospheric contributions to its water balance. This contrasts with disappearing lakes and drastic shrinkage of lake areas on the adjacent Mongolian Plateau: 208 lakes disappeared, and 75% of the remaining lakes have shrunk. We detected a statistically significant coincidental timing of lake area changes in both plateaus, associated with the climate regime shift that occurred during 1997/1998. This distinct change in 1997/1998 is thought to be driven by large‐scale atmospheric circulation changes in response to climate warming. Our findings reveal that these two adjacent plateaus have been changing in opposite directions in response to climate change. These findings shed light on the complex role of the regional climate and water cycles and provide useful information for ecological and water resource planning in these fragile landscapes.

Using remote sensing images, we provided the first complete picture of freshwater bodies in mainland China. We mapped 89,700 reservoirs, covering about 26,870 km2 and approximately 185,000 lakes with a surface area of about 82,232 km2. Despite relatively small surface area, the total estimated storage capacity of reservoirs (794 km3) is triple that of lakes (268 km3). Further analysis indicates that reservoir construction has made the river systems strongly regulated: only 6% of the assessed river basins are free-flowing; 20% of assessed river basins have enough cumulative reservoir capacity to store more than the entire annual river flow. Despite the existence of 2,721 lakes greater than 1 km2, we found that about 50 lakes greater than km2 have formed on the Tibetan Plateau resulting from climate change. More than 350 lakes of ≥1 km2 vanished in four other major lake regions. Although the disappearance of lakes happened in the context of global climate change, it principally reflects the severe anthropogenic impacts on natural lakes, such as, the excessive plundering of water resources on the Inner Mongolia-Xinjiang Plateau and serious destruction (land reclamation and urbanization) on the eastern plains.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) evasion from inland waters is an important component of the global carbon cycle. However, it remains unknown how global change affects CO2 emissions over longer time scales. Here, we present seasonal and annual fluxes of CO2 emissions from streams, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs throughout China and quantify their changes over the past three decades. We found that the CO2 emissions declined from 138 ± 31 Tg C yr−1 in the 1980s to 98 ± 19 Tg C yr−1 in the 2010s. Our results suggest that this unexpected decrease was driven by a combination of environmental alterations, including massive conversion of free-flowing rivers to reservoirs and widespread implementation of reforestation programs. Meanwhile, we found increasing CO2 emissions from the Tibetan Plateau inland waters, likely attributable to increased terrestrial deliveries of organic carbon and expanded surface area due to climate change. We suggest that the CO2 emissions from Chinese inland waters have greatly offset the terrestrial carbon sink and are therefore a key component of China’s carbon budget.

River ecosystems contribute significantly to CO2 emissions. However, estimates of global riverine CO2 emissions remain greatly uncertain owing to the absence of a comprehensive and spatially resolved CO2 emission measurement. Based on intensive field measurements using floating chambers, riverine CO2 evasion in the Wuding River catchment on the Loess Plateau was investigated. Lateral carbon derived from soil respiration and chemical weathering played a central role in controlling the variability of riverine CO2 partial pressure (pCO2). In addition, in‐stream processing of allochthonous organic carbon was an also important source of CO2 excess, modulating the influence of lateral carbon inputs. All the surveyed streams were net CO2 sources, exhibiting pronounced spatial and seasonal variabilities. The mean CO2 efflux was 172, 116, and 218 mmol m−2 d−1 in spring, summer, and autumn, respectively. Unlike the commonly observed strongest CO2 emissions in headwater streams, the increasing CO2 efflux with stream order in the Wuding River catchment reflects its unique geomorphologic landscape in controlling CO2 emissions. While in reservoirs, the pCO2 was more controlled by primary production with aquatic photosynthetic assimilation constraining it to a lower level. Both the magnitude and direction of CO2 evasion from reservoirs have been greatly altered. Contrast to streams with large CO2 effluxes, reservoirs were small carbon sources and even carbon sinks, due primarily to greatly reduced turbulence and enhanced photosynthesis. In view of the large number of reservoirs on the Loess Plateau, assessing the resulting changes to CO2 emissions and their implications for regional carbon budgets warrants further research.

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