Changes in inland lakes on the Tibetan Plateau over the past 40 years

Fang, Yaohui; Cheng, Weiming; Zhang, Yichi; Wang, Nan; Zhao, Shengchuan; Zhou, Chen; Chen, Xi; Bao, Anming

doi:10.1007/s11442-016-1277-0

Cited by 38 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(44 reference statements)

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“…Systematically monitoring lake areas therefore supports estimates of the rates of change. Our comparative analysis confirms previous findings that have reported that expanding lakes are not spread uniformly across the Tibetan Plateau [6,19,21], but are instead focused in the northeastern part of the Plateau. Compared to the distribution of glaciers (Figure 1), we found that lakes grew by the smallest amount where glaciers in the Himalayan Mountains Range are most numerous.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Object-Based Detection of Lakes Prone to Seasonal Ice Cover on the Tibetan Plateau

Korzeniowska

Korup

2017

Remote Sensing

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Abstract:The Tibetan Plateau, the world's largest orogenic plateau, hosts thousands of lakes that play prominent roles as water resources, environmental archives, and sources of natural hazards such as glacier lake outburst floods. Previous studies have reported that the size of lakes on the Tibetan Plateau has changed rapidly in recent years, possibly because of atmospheric warming. Tracking these changes systematically with remote sensing data is challenging given the different spectral signatures of water, the potential for confusing lakes with glaciers, and difficulties in classifying frozen or partly frozen lakes. Object-based image analysis (OBIA) offers new opportunities for automated classification in this context, and we have explored this method for mapping lakes from LANDSAT images and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation data. We tested our algorithm for most of the Tibetan Plateau, where lakes in tectonic depressions or blocked by glaciers and sediments have different surface colours and seasonal ice cover in images obtained in 1995 and 2015. We combined a modified normalised difference water index (MNDWI) with OBIA and local topographic slope data in order to classify lakes with an area >10 km 2 . Our method derived 323 water bodies, with a total area of 31,258 km 2 , or 2.6% of the study area (in 2015). The same number of lakes had covered only 24,892 km 2 in 1995; lake area has increased by~26% in the past two decades. The classification had estimated producer's and user's accuracies of 0.98, with a Cohen's kappa and F-score of 0.98, and may thus be a useful approximation for quantifying regional hydrological budgets. We have shown that our method is flexible and transferable to detecting lakes in diverse physical settings on several continents with similar success rates.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Object-Based Detection of Lakes Prone to Seasonal Ice Cover on the Tibetan Plateau

Korzeniowska

Korup

2017

Remote Sensing

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“…Because the environment on the Tibetan Plateau is pristine, lakes on this remote plateau are vulnerable to the effects of anthropogenic activities. Thus, lakes on the Tibetan Plateau are considered to be sensitive indicators of global climate change (Fang et al, ; Pan & Li, ). Due to climate change, the ice‐free period for lakes on the Tibetan Plateau will become longer (Song et al, ), and the surface areas of these lakes will become more variable (Fang et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lakes on the Tibetan Plateau as Conduits of Greenhouse Gases to the Atmosphere

et al. 2018

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Lakes play an important role in the global carbon cycle, and littoral zones of lakes are potential hotspots of greenhouse gas production. In this study, we measured the partial pressures of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ), and nitrous oxide (N 2 O) in the littoral zones of 17 lakes on the Tibetan Plateau. The littoral zones of lakes on the Tibetan Plateau were supersaturated and acted as sources of CO 2 , CH 4 , and N 2 O to the atmosphere. The average partial pressures of CO 2 , CH 4 , and N 2 O in the surface lake water were 664.8 ± 182.5, 139.8 ± 335.6, and 0.3 ± 0.1 μatm, respectively. The average diffusive fluxes (and uncentainty intervals) of these three gases were 73.7 (0.9-295.3) mmol · m À2 · day À1 , 5.2 (0.0008-45.9) mmol · m À2 · day À1 , and 6.5 (0.07-20.9) μmol · m À2 · day À1 , respectively. The diffusive fluxes of CO 2 in lakes were significantly correlated with dissolved organic carbon, dissolved organic nitrogen, salinity, and water temperature. The diffusive fluxes of N 2 O were significantly correlated with lake water depth. However, no relationships were found between environmental factors and the CH 4 diffusive flux at the scale of this study. CO 2 exchange with the atmosphere from saline lakes was found to be higher than from freshwater lakes with equivalent CO 2 concentrations by a factor of 2.5 due to chemical enhancement of the gas transfer velocity. Therefore, further study with enhanced spatiotemporal resolution and breadth is needed to better understand the important role played by lakes on the Tibetan Plateau in both regional and global carbon cycles.

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“…The Tibetan Plateau (TP), serves as the "water tower" of Asian countries, accommodating 1055 alpine lakes with a total lake area equals to 41,831.7 km 2 [1]. It also hosts approximately 36,000 glaciers spread across the northern (Tianshan ranges), central (Tanggula mountain), and southern (Himalaya ranges) parts of the region.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Freshwater Mass Balance in the Central Tibetan Plateau by Integrating Satellite Remote Sensing, Altimetry, and Gravimetry

et al. 2016

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Abstract:The Tibetan Plateau (TP) has been observed by satellite optical remote sensing, altimetry, and gravimetry for a variety of geophysical parameters, including water storage change. However, each of these sensors has its respective limitation in the parameters observed, accuracy and spatial-temporal resolution. Here, we utilized an integrated approach to combine remote sensing imagery, digital elevation model, and satellite radar and laser altimetry data, to quantify freshwater storage change in a twin lake system named Chibuzhang Co and Dorsoidong Co in the central TP, and compared that with independent observations including mass changes from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data. Our results show that this twin lake, located within the Tanggula glacier system, remained almost steady during 1973-2000. However, Dorsoidong Co has experienced a significant lake level rise since 2000, especially during [2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005], that resulted in the plausible connection between the two lakes. The contemporary increasing lake level signal at a rate of 0.89˘0.05 cm¨yr´1, in a 2˝by 2˝grid equivalent water height since 2002, is higher than the GRACE observed trend at 0.41˘0.17 cm¨yr´1 during the same time span. Finally, a down-turning trend or inter-annual variability shown in the GRACE signal is observed after 2012, while the lake level is still rising at a consistent rate.

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Changes in inland lakes on the Tibetan Plateau over the past 40 years

Cited by 38 publications

References 45 publications

Object-Based Detection of Lakes Prone to Seasonal Ice Cover on the Tibetan Plateau

Object-Based Detection of Lakes Prone to Seasonal Ice Cover on the Tibetan Plateau

Lakes on the Tibetan Plateau as Conduits of Greenhouse Gases to the Atmosphere

Quantifying Freshwater Mass Balance in the Central Tibetan Plateau by Integrating Satellite Remote Sensing, Altimetry, and Gravimetry

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