Variation of water and salt influenced by human activities at Ulungur Lake, north Xinjiang, China

Since the 1960s, most inland lakes distributed in western China are getting shrinking, salty and even drying due to enhanced human activities. Deterioration of inland lake environment seriously influenced the sustainable development of local society and regional economy. In this article, we studied the dynamic evolution pattern of a representative inland lake in china, i.e., Ulungur Lake, based on water and salt balance of Ulungur Lake. With this model, the research recovered the natural water level, and simulated the evolution of water salinity during 1960-2005. The experimental results indicated that, the changing amplitude of lake-level response to human activities accounted for more than 70%, and the aggravated water salinization was tightly related to increasing irrigation water consumption and shortage of fresh water supply.