Satellite-based tracking of water surface variation of Poyang Lake during the last three decades

摘要

Satellite-based observation provides an effective way to track water variations, since it can be used to retrieve many major hydro-physical variables, especially the water surface area. Here we used multi-satellite data to explore three-decade surface area variations of Poyang Lake, the largest freshwater lake in China. Our results revealed that the water area had declined generally in the last three decades. There existed a downtrend period of about 10 years. Generally, the decreasing trend of the decline was found to be significantly related to basin-scale climate change. Furthermore, the seasonal data demonstrated the remarkable change in surface area from over 3000 km~2 in summer to less than 1000 km~2 in winter. In the period examined, the lake surface area shrank to minimum values in 2003 and 2006. This was possibly related to land-use and land-cover change and construction of reservoirs in the basin, in addition to local climate change.