近百年来罗布泊最后干涸时间的评述

Review of the Studies about the Latest Dried-up Time of the Lop Nur Lake in Recent 100 Years

罗布泊的干涸是中亚干旱地区环境变化的一个重要事件,现有研究对1921年覆水以来最后一次干涸发生的时间存在广泛争议。通过相关概念的明确和研究对象时空范围的限定,基于文献对比分析和遥感图像的重新判读,逐一分析了现有研究成果的异同;并分析了1930年代以来湖面的盈亏情况以及补给水源的变化过程。结果表明:罗布泊最后一次覆水于1962年,干涸可能发生在该年冬季,最迟不晚于次年夏季;在极度干旱的气候背景下,20世纪30年代以来的湖水存在剧烈的盈亏变化;而农业耗水规模的扩大和筑坝拦水,直接促成了最后一次干涸的发生。

Dried-up of the Lop Nur Lake is an important event of environmental change in the arid zone of Central Asia, but scientists have not reached an agreement on the latest dried-up time since the lake was submerged in 1921. After defining some relevant concepts and limiting the spatiotemporal range of the study object, in this paper the defects and doubts of present main viewpoints were analyzed one by one, and the change process and trend of the Lop Nur Lake surface as well as its water sources since the 1930s were also analyzed through comparing the rel- evant bibliography and re-interpreting the remote sensing images. Results indicated that the latest submergence of the Lop Nur Lake occurred in 1962, so the latest dried-up of the lake maybe occurred in winter that year or not lat- er than next summer. Climate was so arid in the study area that the lake changed frequently between expansion and shrinkage since the 1930s. Human activities including farming and damming resulted in the final dried-up of the lake.