High-Resolution Records of the Holocene Paleoenvironmental Variation Reflected by Carbonate and Its Isotopic Compositions in Bosten Lake and Response to Glacial Activities

The Early Holocene paleoclimate in Bosten Lake on the northern margin of the Tarim Basin, southern Xinjiang, is reconstructed through an analysis of a 953 cm long core （BSTC2000） taken from Bosten Lake. Multiple proxies of this core, including the mineral components of carbonate, carbonate content, stable isotopic compositions of carbonate, Ca/Sr, TOC and C/N and C/S of organic matter, are used to reconstruct the climatic change since 8500 a B.P. The chronology model is made by nine AMS 14C ages of leaves, seeds and organic matter contained in two parallel cores. The climate was cold and wet during 8500 to 8100 a B.P. Temperature increased from 8100 to 6400 a B.P., the climate was warm and humid, and the lake expanded. The lake level was highest during this stage. Then from 6400 to 5100 a B.P., the climate became cold and the lake level decreased slightly. During the late mid-Holocene, the climate was hot and dry from 5100 to 3100 a B.P., but there was a short cold period during 4400 to 3800 a B.P. At this temporal interval, a mass of ice and snow melting water supplied the lake at the early time and made the lake level rise. The second highest lake level stage occurred during 5200 to 3800 a B.P. The climate was cool and wet during 3100 to 2200 a B.P., when the lake expanded with decreasing evaporation. The lake had the last short-term high level during 3100 to 2800 a B.P. After this short high lake level period, the lake shrank because of the long-term lower temperature and reduced water supply. From 2200 to 1200 a B.P., the climate was hot and dry, and the lake shrank greatly. Although the temperature decreased somewhat from 1200 a B.P. to the present, the climate was warm and dry. The lake level began to rise a little again, but it did not reach the river bed altitude of the Konqi River, an outflow river of the Bosten Lake.

An automated method for glacial lake mapping in High Mountain Asia using Landsat 8 imagery

Glacial lakes in the High Mountain Asia(HMA)are sensitive to global warming and can result in much more severe flood disasters than some largesized lakes.An accurate and robust method for the extraction of glacial lakes is critical to effective management of these natural water resources.Conventional methods often have limitations in terms of low spectral contrast and heterogeneous backgrounds in an image.This study presents a robust and automated method for the yearly mapping of glacial lake over a large scale,which took advantage of the complementarity between the modified normalized difference water index(MNDWI)and the nonlocal active contour model,required only local homogeneity in reflectance features of lake.The cloud computing approach with the Google Earth Engine(GEE)platform was used to process the intensive amount of Landsat 8 images from 2015 (344 path/rows and approximately 7504 scenes).The experimental results were validated by very high resolution images from Chinese GaoFen-1 (GF-1) panchromatic multi-spectral(PMS)and appeared a general good agreement.This is the first time that information regarding the spatial distribution of glacial lakes over the HMA has been derived automatically within quite a short period of time.By integrating it with the relevant indices,it can also be applied to detect other land cover types such as snow or vegetation with improved accuracy.