Long-term surface water changes and driving cause in Xiong'an, China: from dense Landsat time series images and synthetic analysis

Chunqiao Song; Linghong Ke; Hang Pan; Shengan Zhan; Kai Liu; Ronghua Ma

doi:10.1016/j.scib.2018.05.002

Long-term surface water changes and driving cause in Xiong'an, China: from dense Landsat time series images and synthetic analysis

Sci Bull (Beijing). 2018 Jun 15;63(11):708-716. doi: 10.1016/j.scib.2018.05.002. Epub 2018 May 10.

Authors

Chunqiao Song¹, Linghong Ke², Hang Pan³, Shengan Zhan⁴, Kai Liu⁵, Ronghua Ma⁵

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China; Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States. Electronic address: cqsong@niglas.ac.cn.
² Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States; School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 211100, China.
³ Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States; Department of Geographic Information Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China.
⁴ Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China.

PMID: 36658820
DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2018.05.002

Abstract

China's government statement recently reported the plan of constructing Xiong'an New Area, which aims to phase out some extra capital functions from Beijing and to explore an innovative urban development mode with the priority in eco-environmental protection. The New Area is located in the semi-arid North China Plain (NCP) and is home to NCP's largest natural freshwater wetland, Baiyangdian Lake. A comprehensive realization of surface water dynamics would be crucial for policy-makers to outline a sustainable environment development strategy for New Area. In this study, we used a total of 245 time slices of cloud-free Landsat images to document the continuous changes of water bodies within Xiong'an City during 1984-2016 and to provide detailed evidence of water presence and persistency states and changes under the influences of climate change and human actions. Our results reveal that the New Area water body areas varied dramatically during the past 33 years, ranging from 0.44 km² in April 1988 to 317.85 km² in February 1989. The change of surface water area was not characterized by a monotonically decreasing tendency. The evolution processes can be divided into four sub-stages: the first extreme desiccation in mid-1980s, the wet stage with the most extensive inundation areas and strong inter-annual fluctuations from late-1988 to late 1999, another desiccation stage in early 2000s, and the overall recovering stage between 2007 and 2016. We also mapped the maximum water inundation extents and frequencies of all-season, pre-wet season (February-May) and post-wet season (September-December) for the 33 years and different sub-periods. Although there is good agreement between time series of surface water area evolution in the New Area and station-based precipitation and evaporation variations, multiple lines of evidences reviewed in previous research indicate that the degraded Baiyangdian Lake was also tightly associated with human activities from various aspects, including dam construction, groundwater extraction, agricultural irrigation, etc. We highlighted the current status of exploring the driving mechanism of surface water changes and existing problems, and then offer recommendations.

Keywords: Baiyangdian Lake; Climate change; Landsat; Remote sensing; Surface water; Xiong’an New Area.