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ABSTRACT
Through 2019, the Caspian Sea excluded, the majority (54–60%) of Earth’s irrigation-impacted endorheic lake and sea (ELS) areal extent has been lost in basins that contain as much as 20% of global irrigated agricultural land. Estimates of irrigated agriculture contribution to ELS desiccation based on a steady-state water balance equation for endorheic basins generally agree that this contribution is on the order of 70–90% at the global scale. However, large uncertainties or errors in attribution – as large as 100% – are observed with respect to particular ELS, suggesting that attributions based on a single irrigated agriculture dataset, should be treated cautiously. The observed areal contraction in ELS attributed to irrigated agriculture corresponds to an estimated one-third decrease in ELS volume, excluding the Caspian Sea. Such volumetric decrease is expected to at least double solute concentration in 40–47% of Earth’s ELS.
Acknowledgements
HydroSHEDS data are available from hydrosheds.org; GLWD, https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/global-lakes-and-wetlands-database; Global Surface Water, https://global-surface-water.appspot.com/download; irrigated areas determined by Meier et al. (2018), https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.884744; GFSAD Crop Mask, https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/products/gfsad1kcmv001/. Constructive comments by one anonymous reviewer, Dr. Stephan Schulz, and the associate editor are gratefully acknowledged. The review is included as supplemental material.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).