China's largest desert freshwater lake shrinking faster than ever
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Social
The rate at whichChina's largest desert freshwater lake is shrinking has accelerated dramatically in the past four years, figures show.
Hongjiannao Lake, several hundred kilometres to the west of Beijing, has been disappearing since the 1970s, due to a combination of coalminingandclimate change. But the speed at which it is losing area has increased rapidly since 2009, when it measured 46 square kilometres (sq km), down from 67 sq km in 1969.Data released by local meteorological agencies on Thursday andreported by Chinese state media, shows the lake has now shrunk by almost one-third since 2009, to 31.16 sq km.He Fenqi, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences,has said previouslythat even at the end of the 1990s, "one couldn't see the other bank of the Hongjiannao even through a telescope. Today, it's visible with the naked eye."
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Media
Taxonomy
- Watershed
- Drought
- Desertification