Widespread declines in water salinity of the endorheic Tibetan Plateau lakes

Abstract The Tibetan Plateau (TP) hosts more than one thousand lakes (>1km 2 ) in its endorheic basins. changing climate recent decades has led to significant modifications the hydrologic system. Most TP experienced dramatically expanding areas, rising water levels, and increasing storage, which inevitably influenced lake salinity. This study provides a regional-scale investigation of salinity changes (for 83 with two-epoch records, among approximately 160 >50km by synthesizing multi-source data around 1970s 2010s. Our results reveal considerably declined for most across mean 62 terminal dropped from 92.76 g l −1 42.00 during 1970s–2010s, contrast slight variations (3.42 1.48 21 exorheic or upstream lakes. As result, many hypersaline have become polysaline oligosaline lakes, such as Cedo Caka, Norma Co, etc. In particular, some large (e.g., Siling ‘Twin Lakes’, Ayakkum Lake) also drops salinity, exceptional cases Nam Co Qinghai Lake probably due relatively low ratios increased mass their net storages. widespread declining salinities could greatly influence bacterial richness, diversity, evenness, affect aquatic carbon cycle utilization high-altitude More attention should be paid on understanding saline ecosystem evolution regional response