Global Inland Lake Evaporation Dynamics with Regional Effect on Plant Ecology

Understanding how increasing inland water variations will affect the vegetation phenology is of for eco-hydrological modeling. Here, we show that the temperature-driven evaporation dynamics in the 66 largest lakes on the earth share a pattern of influencing regional vegetation browning ( 100km2). Inland lake evaporation balances are close to a steady-state at about three-quarter annual time scale, in terms of the balance between the open water evaporation of the lake region and the evaporation of the open water excluding the lake. The causality degree of temperature-driven lake evaporation on the regional vegetation browning can be up to 23%. During the 2001-2016 period, salty lakes shrink substantially and cause more vegetation browning than other non-salty lakes. For lakes in Asia, North American, South American, and Europe, the temperature-driven vegetation changes can be up to 23%, 20%, 15%, and 17%, respectively. The regional vegetation of Africa lakes is vulnerable to global warming. <br>