The attribution of surface water storage changes to precipitation, basin hydrology, and human water management. Credit: Zhao Gang
Featuring aridity index (AI) of less than 0.65, the arid land covers around 45% of the Earth’s land and supports over 3 billion people. Severe water shortages in these regions pose serious risks to human well-being and ecosystems. However, understanding of long-term changes in surface water storage and its causes is limited due to insufficient quality data with adequate coverage and resolution.
To address these important issues, research teams and collaborators at the Institute for Geographical Science and Natural Resources (IGSNRR) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) were able to utilize multi-source remote sensing data to help them with monthly A time series of water storage storage was constructed from 105,400 lakes and reservoir changes in global arid regions from 1985 to 2020. Their research was published in Nature Water.
The results revealed that surface water storage in the world’s arid lands, driven primarily by the construction of new reservoirs, increased by 2.20 kilometres per year. Natural lakes and old reservoirs did not show an overall overall trend, but accounted for storage dynamics in 91% of river basins in arid regions.
Further analysis shows that long-term changes in the storage of these water bodies are primarily related to human activities, such as anthropogenic climate warming and water resource management, rather than changes in precipitation, as previously anticipated. It was shown that it is.
This study provides observational data on changes in long-term surface water storage in arid lands around the world, and attributes these changes to human activity. “This study highlights the separation between surface water storage and precipitation in arid regions, poses new challenges for social and ecosystem sustainability.”
This separation highlights the role of global warming and human activity in promoting long-term hydrological change. As a result, precipitation-based water resource management may overestimate or underestimate water availability. Instead, integrated water resource planning should consider climate, basin characteristics, and human activities to more accurately assess water availability.
Details: Gang Zhao et al, Anthropogenic Activity, Isolation of surface water storage from global arid land precipitation by Nature Water (2025). doi:10.1038/s44221-024-00367-7
Provided by the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Quote: Separation of water storage and rainfall in arid lands highlights the human shock (2025, February 7th) obtained on February 9th, 2025 from https://news/2025-02.
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