IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i7p3992-d529586.html

Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Snowline Altitude and Their Responses to Climate Change in the Tienshan Mountains, Central Asia, during 2001–2019

Author

Listed:
  • Gang Deng

    (Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Geo-Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China)

  • Zhiguang Tang

    (Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Geo-Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China)

  • Guojie Hu

    (State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Science, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China)

  • Jingwen Wang

    (National-Local Joint Engineering Laboratory of Geo-Spatial Information Technology, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China
    School of Resource Environment and Safety Engineering, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China)

  • Guoqing Sang

    (National-Local Joint Engineering Laboratory of Geo-Spatial Information Technology, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China
    School of Resource Environment and Safety Engineering, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China)

  • Jia Li

    (National-Local Joint Engineering Laboratory of Geo-Spatial Information Technology, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China
    School of Resource Environment and Safety Engineering, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China)

Abstract

Snow cover is an important water resource in arid and semi-arid regions of Central Asia, and is related to agricultural and livestock production, ecosystems, and socio-economic development. The snowline altitude (SLA) is a significant indicator for monitoring the changes in snow cover in mountainous regions under the changing climate. Here, we investigate the spatiotemporal variation of SLA in the Tienshan Mountains (TS) during 2001–2019 using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) snow cover products on a grid-by-grid basis. The potential influence of topographic factors (slope gradient and aspect) on SLA and the correlation between SLA, temperature, precipitation, and solar radiation are also investigated. The results are as follows: (1) The annual cycle of SLA shows strong seasonal fluctuations (from about 2000 m in late December to 4100 m in early August). The SLA over the TS exhibits a large spatiotemporal heterogeneity. (2) SLA increases with a steeper slope gradient. The SLA of the northerly aspect is generally less than the southerly. (3) The SLA over the TS generally shows an increasing trend in the recent years (2001–2019). The change trend of SLA varies in different months. Except for a slight decrease in June, the SLA increased in almost all months, especially at the start of the melt season (March and April) and the end of melting season (July and August). (4) The SLA increases with increased temperature/radiation in the TS, and decreases with increased precipitation. Solar radiation is the dominant climatic factor affecting the changes of SLA in the TS. Compared with precipitation, temperature is more correlated to SLA dynamics.

Suggested Citation

  • Gang Deng & Zhiguang Tang & Guojie Hu & Jingwen Wang & Guoqing Sang & Jia Li, 2021. "Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Snowline Altitude and Their Responses to Climate Change in the Tienshan Mountains, Central Asia, during 2001–2019," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-21, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:7:p:3992-:d:529586
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/7/3992/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/7/3992/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. T. Caloiero & R. Coscarelli & E. Ferrari, 2018. "Application of the Innovative Trend Analysis Method for the Trend Analysis of Rainfall Anomalies in Southern Italy," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 32(15), pages 4971-4983, December.
    2. Annina Sorg & Tobias Bolch & Markus Stoffel & Olga Solomina & Martin Beniston, 2012. "Climate change impacts on glaciers and runoff in Tien Shan (Central Asia)," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 2(10), pages 725-731, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shuai Sun & Chunxiang Shi & Xiao Liang & Shuai Zhang & Junxia Gu & Shuai Han & Hui Jiang & Bin Xu & Qingbo Yu & Yujing Liang & Shuai Deng, 2023. "The Evaluation of Snow Depth Simulated by Different Land Surface Models in China Based on Station Observations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(14), pages 1-17, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Li, Zhi & Fang, Gonghuan & Chen, Yaning & Duan, Weili & Mukanov, Yerbolat, 2020. "Agricultural water demands in Central Asia under 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C global warming," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    2. Ruan, Hongwei & Yu, Jingjie & Wang, Ping & Hao, Lingang & Wang, Zhenlong, 2023. "Relieving water stress by optimizing crop structure is a practicable approach in arid transboundary rivers of Central Asia," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 275(C).
    3. Mohammed Achite & Gokmen Ceribasi & Ahmet Iyad Ceyhunlu & Andrzej Wałęga & Tommaso Caloiero, 2021. "The Innovative Polygon Trend Analysis (IPTA) as a Simple Qualitative Method to Detect Changes in Environment—Example Detecting Trends of the Total Monthly Precipitation in Semiarid Area," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-17, November.
    4. Steven G. Pueppke & Margulan K. Iklasov & Volker Beckmann & Sabir T. Nurtazin & Niels Thevs & Sayat Sharakhmetov & Buho Hoshino, 2018. "Challenges for Sustainable Use of the Fish Resources from Lake Balkhash, a Fragile Lake in an Arid Ecosystem," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-15, April.
    5. Shan Zou & Abuduwaili Jilili & Weili Duan & Philippe De Maeyer & Tim Van de Voorde, 2019. "Human and Natural Impacts on the Water Resources in the Syr Darya River Basin, Central Asia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-18, May.
    6. Veysi Kartal & Abdullah Muratoglu, 2026. "An Understanding of Hydrometeorological Trends: A Multi-Method Trend Assessment," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 40(5), pages 1-65, March.
    7. Hu, Yanan & Duan, Weili & Zou, Shan & Chen, Yaning & De Maeyer, Philippe & Van de Voorde, Tim & Takara, Kaoru & Kayumba, Patient Mindje & Kurban, Alishir & Goethals, Peter L.M., 2024. "Coupling coordination analysis of the water-food-energy‑carbon nexus for crop production in Central Asia," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 369(C).
    8. Wenhao Dong & Yi Ming & Yi Deng & Zhaoyi Shen, 2024. "Recent wetting trend over Taklamakan and Gobi Desert dominated by internal variability," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-10, December.
    9. Peña‐Guerrero, Mayra Daniela & Umirbekov, Atabek & Tarasova, Larisa & Müller, Daniel, 2022. "Comparing the performance of high‐resolution global precipitation products across topographic and climatic gradients of Central Asia," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 42(11), pages 5554-5569.
    10. Chaofan Li & Qifei Han & Geping Luo & Chengyi Zhao & Shoubo Li & Yuangang Wang & Dongsheng Yu, 2018. "Effects of Cropland Conversion and Climate Change on Agrosystem Carbon Balance of China’s Dryland: A Typical Watershed Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-16, November.
    11. Xiangyao Meng & Yongqiang Liu & Yan Qin & Weiping Wang & Mengxiao Zhang & Kun Zhang, 2022. "Adaptability of MODIS Daily Cloud-Free Snow Cover 500 m Dataset over China in Hutubi River Basin Based on Snowmelt Runoff Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-20, March.
    12. Yu, Yang & Yu, Ruide & Chen, Xi & Yu, Guoan & Gan, Miao & Disse, Markus, 2017. "Agricultural water allocation strategies along the oasis of Tarim River in Northwest China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 24-36.
    13. Vassilios A. Tsihrintzis & Harris Vangelis, 2018. "Water Resources and Environment," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 32(15), pages 4813-4817, December.
    14. Olivier Damette & Stephane Goutte & Qing Pei, 2020. "Climate and nomadic migration in a nonlinear world: evidence of the historical China," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 163(4), pages 2055-2071, December.
    15. Mengru Wei & Zhe Yuan & Jijun Xu & Mengqi Shi & Xin Wen, 2022. "Attribution Assessment and Prediction of Runoff Change in the Han River Basin, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(4), pages 1-22, February.
    16. Stefanie Christmann & Aden Aw-Hassan, 2015. "A participatory method to enhance the collective ability to adapt to rapid glacier loss: the case of mountain communities in Tajikistan," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 133(2), pages 267-282, November.
    17. Wanlu Liu & Lulu Liu & Jiangbo Gao, 2020. "Adapting to climate change: gaps and strategies for Central Asia," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 25(8), pages 1439-1459, December.
    18. Manikandan Muthiah & Saravanan Sivarajan & Nagarajan Madasamy & Anandaraj Natarajan & Raviraj Ayyavoo, 2024. "Analyzing Rainfall Trends Using Statistical Methods across Vaippar Basin, Tamil Nadu, India: A Comprehensive Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(5), pages 1-29, February.
    19. Michel Wortmann & Doris Duethmann & Christoph Menz & Tobias Bolch & Shaochun Huang & Jiang Tong & Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz & Valentina Krysanova, 2022. "Projected climate change and its impacts on glaciers and water resources in the headwaters of the Tarim River, NW China/Kyrgyzstan," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 171(3), pages 1-24, April.
    20. Qingshan He & Jianping Yang & Qiudong Zhao & Hongju Chen & Yanxia Wang & Hui Wang & Xin Wang, 2025. "Assessment of Water Resource Sustainability and Glacier Runoff Impact on the Northern and Southern Slopes of the Tianshan Mountains," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(11), pages 1-25, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:7:p:3992-:d:529586. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.