Lake Buir

Abstract

Lake Buir represents a major surface water resource in eastern Mongolia. The lake plays an important role in the hydrological system of the Pacific Ocean drainage basin. Lake Buir gained an area by 10.43 km² during the last 50 years between 1965 and 2015. This increase in area may have been related to the recent slight rise of the annual precipitation with peaks in 1968–1974, 1987–1998, and 2002–2018 as observed in the lake basin. The regression analysis shows that the lake area during 1965–2015 had no clear linear relationships with the annual average precipitation (R² = 0.0267) and annual average air temperature (R² = 0.0223). The correlation analysis shows that the area of Lake Buir between 1965 and 2015 had a weak positive correlation with precipitation (r = 0.163) and a weak negative correlation with temperature (r = −0.149). The climate trend shows that Lake Buir basin has become gradually warmer during the last six decades and more humid during the last three decades compared with the previous three decades. The local climate trend implies that the impact of the East Asian Summer Monsoon may still reach the Lake Buir basin today. Geomorphological, geochronological, and paleoclimatological investigations in the Lake Buir basin will help to reconstruct the Quaternary, especially Holocene climate change in eastern Mongolia.