Hydro-Chemical Processes in Lake Qinghai throughout Climate Warming: In Situ Investigations of the Largest Lake in China — Oak Academic Publishing
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Hydro-Chemical Processes in Lake Qinghai throughout Climate Warming: In Situ Investigations of the Largest Lake in China
State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China
,
State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China
,
School of Resources Environment and Tourism, Anyang Normal University, Anyang, China
,
Yellow River Conservancy Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources, Zhengzhou, China
,
Key Laboratory of Economic Stratigraphy and Palaeogeography, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sci-ences, Nanjing, China
,
School of Resources and Environment, Linyi University, Linyi, China
,
State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry, Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang, China
1 State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China
2 State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China
3 School of Resources Environment and Tourism, Anyang Normal University, Anyang, China
4 Yellow River Conservancy Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources, Zhengzhou, China
5 Key Laboratory of Economic Stratigraphy and Palaeogeography, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sci-ences, Nanjing, China
6 School of Resources and Environment, Linyi University, Linyi, China
7 State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry, Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang, China
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.
KeywordsHydrochemical ProcessSalinity Spatial Distribution and Temporal VariationLake Level ChangesLake Qinghai
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