Abstract
Inland lakes are major surface water resource in arid regions of Central Asia. The area changes in these lakes have been proved to be the results of regional climate changes and recent human activities. This study aimed at investigating the area variations of the nine major lakes in Central Asia over the last 30 years. Firstly, multi-temporal Landsat imagery in 1975, 1990, 1999, and 2007 were used to delineate lake extents automatically based on Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) threshold segmentation, then lake area variations were detailed in three decades and the mechanism of these changes was analyzed with meteorological data and hydrological data. The results indicated that the total surface areas of these nine lakes had decreased from 91,402.06 km2 to 46,049.23 km2 during 1975–2007, accounting for 49.62% of their original area of 1975. Tail-end lakes in flat areas had shrunk dramatically as they were induced by both climate changes and human impacts, while alpine lakes remained relatively stable due to the small precipitation variations. With different water usage of river outlets, the variations of open lakes were more flexible than those of other two types. According to comprehensive analyses, different types of inland lakes presented different trends of area changes under the background of global warming effects in Central Asia, which showed that the increased human activities had broken the balance of water cycles in this region.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aladin, N. V., & Plotnikov, I. S. (1993). Large saline lakes of former USSR: A summary review. Hydvobiologia, 267, 1–12 (Russian).
Alejandra, L. C., Felipe-Omar, T. S., & Boris, E. R. (2008). Lake Chapala change detection using time series, remote sensing for agriculture, ecosystems, and hydrology. In X. Christopher, M. U. Neale, & M. Owe (Eds.), Guido D’Urso, proc. of SPIE, 7104. doi:10.1117/12.800354.
Boomer, I., Aladin, N., Plotnikov, I., & Whatley, R. (2000). The palaeolimnology of the Aral Sea: A review. Quaternary Science Reviews, 19, 1259–1278.
Braud, D. H., & Feng, W. (1998). Semi-automated construction of the Luisiana coastline digital land/water boundary using Landsat Thematic Mapper satellite imagery. Technical Report 97-002, Department of Geography & Anthropology, Luisina State University. Luisiana Applied Oil Spill Research and Development Program, OSRAPD.
Chen, X. (2008). Land use/cover change in arid areas in China (pp. 180–201). Beijing (in Chinese).
Cowan, P. J. (2007). Geographic usage of the terms Middle Asia and Central Asia. Journal of Arid Environment, 69, 359–363.
Friedrich, J., & Oberhänsli, H. (2002–2004). Hydrochemical properties of the Aral Sea water in summer. Journal of Marine Systems, 47, 77–88.
Gao, H., Zhu, Z., & Li, Z. Y. (2005). Quantitative analysis of the impact of irrigation water from Kaidu River on the area change of Bosten Lake. Journal of Natural Resources, 20(4), 502–507 (in Chinese with English abstract).
Harris, A. R. (1994). Time series remote sensing of a climatically sensitive lake. Remote Sensing of Environment, 50, 83–94.
Jarvis, A., Reuter, H. I., Nelson, A., & Guevara, E. (2008). Hole-filled SRTM for the globe Version 4. Available from the CGIAR-CSI SRTM 90 m Database: http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org.
Kezer, K., & Matsuyama, H. (2006). Decrease of river runoff in the Lake Balkhash basin in Central Asia. Hydrological Processes, 20, 1407–1423.
Lehner, B., & Döll, P. (2004). Development and validation of a global database of lakes, reservoirs and wetlands. Journal of Hydrology, 296, 1–22.
Lioubimtseva, E., Cole, R., Adams, J. M., & Kapustin, G. (2005). Impacts of climate and land-cover changes in arid lands of Central Asia. Journal of Arid Environments, 62, 285–308.
Lioubimtseva, E., & Henebry, G. M. (2009). Climate and environmental change in arid Central Asia: Impacts, vulnerability, and adaptations. Journal of Arid Environments, 73, 963–977.
Lira, J. (2006). Segmentation and morphology of open water bodies from multispectral images. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 27(18), 4015–4038.
Luo, J. C., Sheng, Y. W., Shen, Z. F., & Li, J. L. (2009). Automatic and high-precise extraction for water information from multispectral images with the step-by-step iterative transformation mechanism. Journal of Remote Sensing, 13(4), 604–609.
Ma, M., Wang, X., Veroustraete, F., & Dong, L. (2007). Change in area of Ebinur Lake during the 1998–2005 period. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 28(24), 5523–5533.
Mason, I. M., Guzkowska, M. A. J., & Rapley, C. G. (1994). The response of lake levels and areas to climatic change. Climate Change, 27, 161–197.
McFeeters, S. K. (1996). The use of normalized difference water index (NDWI) in the delineation of open water features. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 17(7), 1425–1432.
Micklin, P. P. (1988). Dessication of the Aral Sea: A water management disaster in the Soviet Union. Science, 241, 1170–1176.
Nezlin, N. P., Kostianoy, A. G., & Lebedev, S. A. (2004). Interannual variations of the discharge of Amu Darya and Syr Darya estimated from global atmospheric precipitation. Journal of Marine Systems, 47, 67–75.
Ouma, Y. O., & Tateishi, R. (2006). A water index for rapid mapping of shoreline changes of five East African Rift Valley lakes: An empirical analysis using Landsat TM and ETM+ data. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 27(15), 3153–3181.
Ouma, Y. O., & Tateishi, R. (2007). Lake water body mapping with multi-resolution based image analysis from medium-resolution satellite imagery. International Journal of Environmental Studies, 64(3), 357–379.
Qin, B. Q. (1999). A preliminary Investigation of lake evolution in 20-century in inland mainland asia with relation to the global warming. Journal of Lake Sciences, 11(1), 11–19 (in Chinese with English abstract).
Saiko, T. A., & Zonn, I. S. (2000). Irrigation expansion and dynamics of desertification in the Circum-Aral region of Central Asia. Applied Geography, 20, 349–367.
Savvaitova, K., & Petr, T. (1992). Lake Issyk-kul, Kirgizia. International Journal of Salt Lake Research, 1(2), 21–46.
Stanev, E. V., Peneva, E. L., & Mercier, F. (2004). Temporal and spatial patterns of sea level in inland basins: Recent events in the Aral Sea. Geophys Research, 31(5505). doi:10.1029/2004GL020478.
Tatyana, A. S., & Igor, S. Z. (2000). Irrigation expansion and dynamics of desertification in the Circum-Aral region of Central Asia. Applied Geography, 20, 349–367.
Xie, P., Yatagai, A., Chen, M., Hayasaka, T., Fukushima, Y., Liu, C., et al. (2007). A gauge-based analysis of daily precipitation over east Asia. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 8, 607–627.
Xu, H. Q. (2006). Modification of normalized difference water index (NDWI) to enhance open water features in remotely sensed imagery. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 27(14), 3025–3033.
Yatagai, A., Arakawa, O., Kamiguchi, K., Kawamoto, H., Nodzu, M. I., & Hamada, A. (2009). A 44-year daily gridded precipitation dataset for Asia based on a dense network of rain gauges. Sola, 5, 137–140.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bai, J., Chen, X., Li, J. et al. Changes in the area of inland lakes in arid regions of central Asia during the past 30 years. Environ Monit Assess 178, 247–256 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-010-1686-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-010-1686-y