Lake shoreline identification and water storage change estimation of the largest lacustrine period from Marine Isotope Stage 5 to Holocene on the Tibetan Plateau

There are numerous lakes on the Tibetan Plateau (TP), which constitutes a significant part of the ”Water Tower of Asia”, and multiple high lake levels occurred during historical periods. However, current researches primarily focus on field investigations and dating of shorelines for individual or a few lakes. This study emphasized the identification of highest lake shorelines across the entire TP, along with a study of the extent and water storage variations of the largest lakes during Marine Isotope Stage 5 to Holocene, which is conducive to understand the characteristics of lake change in the past and facilitating more accurate prediction of future lake variation. In this study, we identified the highest lake shorelines on the TP by Google Earth, and reconstructed the water storage change since the largest paleo-lake during the geological historical period relative to current lake in 2022. Finally, we found that 181 lakes were merged into 115 lakes in the past period. The results showed that the total area of the lakes during the largest lacustrine period was 60 675 km², which was nearly twice as large as the modern lakes, and the average water level was 43 m higher than that of the modern, with the water storage change of 2681 km³, which was 3 times of the modern. The lakes with large changes were mainly distributed in the southern and western parts of TP. The water storage change in the combined lake group was 1994 km³, accounting for 74.38% of the total change. Combined with the age data of 32 lakes, it showed that the ages of the highest water level of lakes mostly occurred in Holocene, the Last Deglaciation and the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3. This study will be helpful to understand the spatial differences of paleo-lake changes and its evolution mechanism.