Abstract
In the wake of climate warming, the water level of Lake Qinghai has been continuously and rapidly declining during the past decades, causing the regional government and citizens to worry about its future as a water resource. To understand the lake evolution process, the hydro-chemical characteristics of Lake Qinghai were investigated in August of 2008. The results show that Na+ and Cl- are the dominant cations and anions in the lake water, respectively, and hydrochemistry type is Cl-- Na+ with an obvious characteristic of a saline lake. The Gibbs plot illuminates that evaporation/crystallization is responsible for the chemical composition of the lake water. The variation in hydro-chemical regime might be attributed to the reduced lake levels between 1960s and 2000s. The lake level significantly correlated with the precipitation and evaporation in the Lake Qinghai catchment. In addition, changes of the lake level in the future are simulated according to climate warming scenarios from the IPCC report. The simulated results suggest that the lake level could rise again in the following decades due to the increased precipitation under the climate warming conditions, which is already a trend in the lake level observation data.
Highlights
The results show that Na+ and Cl− are the dominant cations and anions in the lake water, respectively, and hydrochemistry type is Cl−-Na+ with an obvious characteristic of a saline lake
Most lakes on the Tibetan plateau are endorheic, which means that lake level changes directly reflect the variation of water balance in the catchment and the water cycling process could be recorded by the water chemistry of the lake
We investigated the hydrochemistry of Lake Qinghai including chemistry and spatial distribution characteristics as well as its evolution
Summary
Most lakes on the Tibetan plateau are endorheic, which means that lake level changes directly reflect the variation of water balance in the catchment and the water cycling process could be recorded by the water chemistry of the lake. Researches of hydro-chemistry of the lake can be significant, as it reflects the environmental conditions of salt material accumulation or dilution in the lake and the catchment environment around the lake. The chemical composition of the lake water provides reliable evidences for modern sedimentary processes in the lake. Research on the hydrochemistry of Lake Qinghai is important for the elucidation of modern environmental change, and a significant reference to clarify the formation and evolution of saline lakes on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Focusing on temporal and spatial variations of hydrochemistry, and predicts which could provide fundamental data for the study of lake sedimentary processes
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