Abstract
High-altitude inland-drainage lakes on the Tibetan Plateau (TP), the earth’s third pole, are very sensitive to climate change. Tibetan lakes are important natural resources with important religious, historical, and cultural significance. However, the spatial patterns and processes controlling the impacts of climate and associated changes on Tibetan lakes are largely unknown. This study used long time series and multi-temporal Landsat imagery to map the patterns of Tibetan lakes and glaciers in 1977, 1990, 2000, and 2014, and further to assess the spatiotemporal changes of lakes and glaciers in 17 TP watersheds between 1977 and 2014. Spatially variable changes in lake and glacier area as well as climatic factors were analyzed. We identified four modes of lake change in response to climate and associated changes. Lake expansion was predominantly attributed to increased precipitation and glacier melting, whereas lake shrinkage was a main consequence of a drier climate or permafrost degradation. These findings shed new light on the impacts of recent environmental changes on Tibetan lakes. They suggest that protecting these high-altitude lakes in the face of further environmental change will require spatially variable policies and management measures.
Highlights
Lakes act as sentinels to environmental change, providing signals that reflect the influence of changes in climate [1,2]
Warming, increased precipitation, and permafrost degradation were observed in both the Arctic and the Tibetan Plateau (TP), increases in lake number and area on the TP demonstrated by this study are assumed to have a different origin to the changes in the Arctic where spatial patterns of lake reduction were predominantly associated with thawing permafrost [49]
The integration of meteorological records and remote sensing data has enabled the investigation of the impacts of spatially variable patterns of climate and associated environmental changes on Tibetan lakes
Summary
Lakes act as sentinels to environmental change, providing signals that reflect the influence of changes in climate [1,2]. High altitude inland-drainage lakes on the TP are relatively un-impacted by direct human activities compared to lakes in most parts of the world They are uniquely suited for identifying the environmental effects of climate and associated change. Glacial runoff has increased so that the number and area of glacial lakes has changed in recent decades [12,13,14]. Permafrost degradation increases the infiltration of rainfall and snowmelt to the root zone for later transpiration. This eventually reduces runoff, further affecting the number and surface area of lakes on the TP [9,16,17]
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