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Increasing lake levels on the central Tibetan Plateau since 1920 CE inferred by
a sub-fossil chironomid record from Shen Co

Conference Paper · May 2022

DOI: 10.5194/egusphere-egu22-9534

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EGU22-9534
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-9534
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Increasing lake levels on the central Tibetan Plateau since 1920 CE

inferred by a sub-fossil chironomid record from Shen Co
Sonja Rigterink1, Paula Echeverría-Galindo1, Rodrigo Martínez-Abarca1, Julieta Massaferro2,
Philipp Hoelzmann3, Bernd Wünnemann3, Andreas Laug1, Liseth Pérez1, Wengang Kang1, Nicole
Börner1, Anja Schwarz1, Ping Peng4, Junbo Wang4, Liping Zhu4, and Antje Schwalb1
1
Institute of Geosystems and Bioindication, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany (s.rigterink@tu-
braunschweig.de, p.echeverria-galindo@tu-braunschweig.de, l.martinez-abarca@tu-braunschweig.de,
andreasjlaug@gmail.com, l.perez@tu-brauns
2
CENAC (Program of Applied Studies to Biodiversity Conservation of Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi) / CONICET (National
Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina), Bariloche, Argentina (jmassaferro@comahue-conicet.gob.ar)
3
Institut für Geographische Wissenschaften, Physische Geographie, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
(philipp.hoelzmann@fu-berlin.de, wuenne@zedat.fu-berlin.de)
4
Key Laboratory of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P.R. China (pengping@itpcas.ac.cn, wangjb@itpcas.ac.cn, lpzhu@itpcas.ac.cn)

Lakes on the Tibetan Plateau are especially vulnerable to global warming and increasing
temperatures but are also sensitive to changes in the atmospheric circulation such as the
Westerlies and the Asian Summer Monsoon, which are main drivers of precipitation on the
Plateau. Shallow lake environments in such high-altitudinal areas, which are not directly influenced
by meltwater supply, are excellent study sites to determine changes in precipitation and
evaporation. Here, we present a 300-year high-resolution chironomid record from the high-
altitude (> 4,733 m a.s.l.), saline (9 g L-1) and shallow (~ 5 m water depth) lake Shen Co (N 31° 00’, E
90°29’), situated on the southern part of the central Tibetan Plateau. We combined chironomid
assemblages with sedimentological, mineralogical and geochemical data from a short sediment
core (37.5 cm) to detect hydrological changes since 1830 CE. Our study revealed three different
periods in Shen Co: (1) from 1830 until 1920 CE sediments were void of chironomids, suggesting
dry conditions leading to low lake levels, high salinity resulting from low runoff and high
evaporation rates, supported by increasing Mg/Ca and Sr/Rb ratios of the sediments; (2) a humid
phase characterized by the appearance of Acricotopus indet. morphotype incurvatus from 1920
until 1950 CE, indicating rising lake levels caused by higher runoff and decreased evaporation, also
supported by sediment analysis with increasing TOC and Ti as well as a decreasing Ca/Ti ratio; and
(3) a continuous water level rise from the 1950s onwards with a lake level maximum as well as
high macrophyte growth since the beginning of the 21th century, supported by the dominance of
Procladius and the phytophilic taxon Psectrocladius sordidellus-type. We compared our results
with paleoclimate records from the Tibetan Plateau, based on e.g. ice core δ18O, pollen, tree rings,
indicating warmer and wetter climate conditions on the central Tibetan Plateau during the last ~
100 years. Our findings highlight that chironomid records from shallow lake environments are
excellent indicators of lake level variations as well as changes in macrophyte vegetation.
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