TITLE:
Hydro-Chemical Processes in Lake Qinghai throughout Climate Warming: In Situ Investigations of the Largest Lake in China
AUTHORS:
Chuanfang Jin, Shijie Li, Hongliang Zhang, Jifeng Liu, Wei Chen, Yongjian Jiang
KEYWORDS:
Hydrochemical Process, Salinity Spatial Distribution and Temporal Variation, Lake Level Changes, Lake Qinghai
JOURNAL NAME:
Natural Science,
Vol.8 No.12,
December
28,
2016
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.