LakeStatus21k

By Hancock et al. | December 3, 2024

Introduction

LakeStatus21k is a global compilation of lake status records for the past 21,000 years. Lake basins are sensitive to changes in moisture balance, and this database synthesizes records that document past changes in lake status (e.g., lake level, hydrologic balance, lake area) to reconstruct regional and global hydroclimate variability. The compilation contains 436 records from 373 sites. The data are primarily sourced from the Oxford Lake Status databank (OLS) (n=86; Street-Perrott et al., 1989), which provides ordinal data measuring the vertical change in the elevation of the lake surface binned into three categories, namely high (70%–100% of total vertical range of lake fluctuation), intermediate (15%–70%), and low (0%–15%). These data were supplemented with 74 sites from the Global Lake Status Database (GLSDB; Harrison et al., 2003), which provide similar ordinal data but with increased spatial coverage in Eurasia from the inclusion of additional regional data compilations (Tarasov et al., 1996; Yu et al., 2001; Yu, 1995). If available, OLS and GLSDB data were replaced by newer, higher-resolution records from the same site. An additional 52 records are provided by the more recently created North America (n=28; Liefert and Shuman, 2020), eastern and southern Africa (n=19; De Cort et al., 2021), and Australian (n=5; Clerke, 2023) lake level databases, and another four records from west Africa (Shanahan et al., 2006), South America (Placzek et al., 2006), and Asia (Jiang et al., 2020; H. Xu et al., 2020) were identified according to the defined selection criteria. These data represent a variety of measurement types, ranging between relative lake status estimates similar to the OLS to more precise values of absolute water level elevation. Generally, the newer data provide improved measurement values which are more descriptive and more precise in age compared to the OLS data.

Data Coverage Map
Data Coverage Map

Data

Data access and LiPDverse visualizations are available here.

Publication

A manuscript that describes this compilation was published in Climate of the Past and is available here.

How to cite this compilation

Hancock, C. L., Erb, M. P., McKay, N. P., Dee, S. G., and Ivanovic, R. F.: A global Data Assimilation of Moisture Patterns from 21000–0 BP (DAMP-21ka) using lake level proxy records, Clim. Past, 20, 2663–2684, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-2663-2024, 2024.

Criteria for inclusion

The complete criteria for inclusion are described in the publication, but in short: To be included in the LakeStatus21k compilation, a dataset must meet several criteria:

  1. Proxy Type: Records must provide information on past lake status (e.g., lake level, moisture balance).
  2. Archive Type: The record must originate from a lake basin.
  3. Temporal Span: Records must cover some portion of the last 21,000 years.
  4. Chronological Control: Records must have a defensible chronology with reported age control points.
  5. Peer-review: Records must be from peer-reviewed publications.

Long-term archival

The LakeStatus21k data are available on LiPDverse, as well as Zenodo.

References

Clerke, L.: Hydrological regime of Australian lakes over the Late-Quaternary and Holocene, Doctoral dissertation, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, https://doi.org/10.25949/22662253.v1, 2023.

De Cort, G., Chevalier, M., Burrough, S. L., Chen, C. Y., and Harrison, S. P.: An uncertainty-focused database approach to extract spatiotemporal trends from qualitative and discontinuous lake-status histories, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 258, 106870, hthttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.106870, 2021.

Harrison, S. P., Kutzbach, J. E., Liu, Z., Bartlein, P. J., Otto-Bliesner, B., Muhs, D., Prentice, I. C., and Thompson, R. S.: Mid-Holocene climates of the Americas: a dynamical response to changed seasonality, Clim. Dynam., 20, 663–688, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-002-0300-6, 2003.

Liefert, D. T. and Shuman, B. N.: Pervasive desiccation of North American lakes during the Late Quaternary, Geophys. Res. Lett., 47, e2019GL086412, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL086412, 2020.

Jiang, M., Han, Z., Li, X., Wang, Y., Stevens, T., Cheng, J., Lv, C., Zhou, Y., Yang, Q., Xu, Z., Yi, S., and Lu, H.: Beach ridges of Dali Lake in Inner Mongolia reveal precipitation variation during the Holocene, J. Quaternary Sci., 35, 716–725, https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3195, 2020.

Liefert, D. T. and Shuman, B. N.: Pervasive desiccation of North American lakes during the Late Quaternary, Geophys. Res. Lett., 47, e2019GL086412, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL086412, 2020.

Placzek, C., Quade, J., and Patchett, P. J.: Geochronology and stratigraphy of late Pleistocene lake cycles on the southern Bolivian Altiplano: Implications for causes of tropical climate change, Geol. Soc. Am. Bull., 118, 515–532, https://doi.org/10.1130/b25770.1, 2006.

Shanahan, T. M., Overpeck, J. T., Wheeler, C. W., Beck, J. W., Pigati, J. S., Talbot, M. R., Scholz, C. A., Peck, J., and King, J. W.: Paleoclimatic variations in West Africa from a record of late Pleistocene and Holocene lake level stands of Lake Bosumtwi, Ghana, Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclim. Palaeoecol., 242, 287–302, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2006.06.007, 2006.

Street-Perrott, F. A., Marchand, D. S., Roberts, N., and Harrison, S. P.: Global lake-level variations from 18,000 to 0 years ago: A palaeoclimate analysis, Geography School, Oxford Univ., UK, https://doi.org/10.2172/5609291, 1989.

Tarasov, P. E., Harrison, S. P., Saarse, L., Pushenko, M. Y., Andreev, A. A., Aleshinskaya, Z. V., Davydova, N. N., Dorofeyuk, N. I., Efremov, Yu. V., Khomutova, V. I., Sevastyanov, D. V., Tamosaitis, J., Uspenskaya, O. N., Yakushko, O. F., Tarasova, I. V., Ya, M., Elina, G. A., Elovicheva, Y. K., Filimonova, L. V., Gunova, V. S., Kvavadze, E. V., Nuestrueva, I. Y., Pisareva, V. V., Shelekhova, T. S., Subetto, D. A., Zernitskaya, V. P.: Lake status records from the Former Soviet Union and Mongolia: documentation of the second version of the database, Paleoclimatology Publications Series Report #5, National Centers For Environmental Information, https://doi.org/10.25921/49ag-ck94, 1996.

Xu, H., Goldsmith, Y., Lan, J., Tan, L., Wang, X., Zhou, X., Cheng, J., Lang, Y., and Liu, C.: Juxtaposition of Western Pacific subtropical high on Asian summer monsoon shapes subtropical East Asian precipitation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 47, e2019GL084705, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL084705, 2020.

Yu, G.: Lake status records from Europe: data base documentation, Publications Series Report #3, National Centers For Environmental Information, https://doi.org/10.25921/p5aq-0931, 1995.

Yu, G., Harrison, S. P., and Xue, B.: Lake status records from China: data base documentation, MPI-BGC Tech Rep. 4, MPI, https://www.bgc-jena.mpg.de/5362440/tech_report04.pdf (last access: 3 July 2024), 2001.