Abstract
Lake Ulaan is a terminal lake at the eastern end of the Valley of Lakes in the northernmost Govi region, and the lake plays a valuable role in surface water resource of southern Mongolia. Lake Ulaan basin has been strengthened with the warming and drying since the mid-1970s. Lake Ulaan experienced changes of its area and sedimentation dynamics during the Holocene. The lake lost an area of 18.2 km2 during the last four to five decades, and it disappeared between the mid-1980s and the mid-2010s. In short, Lake Ulaan has been a playa lake during the last half century. The playa lake condition coincides with regional climate change and local warming since 1975 and drying since 1974. The linear regression analysis shows that the lake area between 1986 and 2014 had no clear relationships with the annual average air temperature (R2 = 0.0833) and precipitation (R2 = 0.0063). The correlation analysis shows that the lake area during 1986–2014 had a weak positive correlation with air temperature (r = 0.288) but no clear correlation with precipitation (r = 0.07). The geochemical analysis shows the dominance of alkali and alkaline earth metals in Lake Ulaan sediments and the higher degree of chemical weathering in the lake margin than the lake center. The chemical maturity of the Lake Ulaan sediments shows the shift from semiarid to arid climate conditions in the lake basin. Lake Ulaan contributes to the understanding of the response of the local hydrological system to climate change, and it helps in revealing the landscape evolution of the Valley of Lakes in southern Mongolia over geological time scales.
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Notes
- 1.
Govi has been often spelled as Gobi in the international literature. Govi is the correct English transliteration from Mongolian Говь.
- 2.
Khangai has been misspelled as Khangay (or Hangay) and Hangai in many publications. Khangai is the right English transliteration from Mongolian Хангай.
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Orkhonselenge, A., Uuganzaya, M., Davaagatan, T. (2022). Lake Ulaan. In: Lakes of Mongolia. Syntheses in Limnogeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99120-3_11
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