The response of lake area and vegetation cover variations to climate change over the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau during the past 30years

Zengxin Zhang; Juan Chang; Chong-Yu Xu; Yang Zhou; Yanhong Wu; Xi Chen; Shanshan Jiang; Zheng Duan

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.04.113

The response of lake area and vegetation cover variations to climate change over the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau during the past 30years

Sci Total Environ. 2018 Sep 1:635:443-451. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.04.113. Epub 2018 Apr 24.

Authors

Zengxin Zhang¹, Juan Chang², Chong-Yu Xu³, Yang Zhou², Yanhong Wu⁴, Xi Chen⁵, Shanshan Jiang², Zheng Duan⁶

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulics Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China; Joint Innovation Center for Modern Forestry Studies, College of Biology and the Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China. Electronic address: nfuzhang@163.com.
² Joint Innovation Center for Modern Forestry Studies, College of Biology and the Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China.
³ Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo 0317, Norway.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, China.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulics Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China; Institute of Surface-Earth System Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China.
⁶ Chair of Hydrology and River Basin Management, Technical University of Munich, Munich 80333, Germany.

PMID: 29677670
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.04.113

Abstract

Lakes and vegetation are important factors of the Earth's hydrological cycle and can be called an "indicator" of climate change. In this study, long-term changes of lakes' area and vegetation coverage in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) and their relations to the climate change were analyzed by using Mann-Kendall method during the past 30years. Results showed that: 1) the lakes' area of the QTP increased significantly during the past 30years as a whole, and the increasing rates have been dramatically sped up since the year of 2000. Among them, the area of Ayakekumu Lake has the fastest growing rate of 51.35%, which increased from 618km² in the 1980s to 983km² in the 2010s; 2) overall, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) increased in the QTP during the past 30years. Above 79% of the area in the QTP showed increasing trend of NDVI before the year of 2000; 3) the air temperature increased significantly, the precipitation increased slightly, and the pan evaporation decreased significantly during the past 30years. The lake area and vegetation coverage changes might be related to the climate change. The shifts in the temporal climate trend occurred around the year 2000 had led the lake area and vegetation coverage increasing. This study is of importance in further understanding the environmental changes under global warming over the QTP.

Keywords: Climate change; Lake area; Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau; Vegetation restoration.