Recently, Dr. Luciane Fontana, a postdoctoral fellow funded by the Young Overseas High-level Talents Instruction Planof the SAFEA (State Administration of Foreign Affairs), cooperated with Professor Xiaozhong Huang's team and published the paper entitled “The impact of climate change and human activity on the Ecological status of Bosten Lake, NW China, revealed by a diatom record for the last 2000 years" in the journal The Holocene. Luciane Fontana is the first author and Professor Xiaozhong Huang is the corresponding author. The Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University is the onlysignature institution of this paper.
Bosten Lake is the largest inland freshwater lake in China. In recent decades, due to global warming, the surface runoff in the mountainous areas around the lake has increased and the glaciers have retreated. However, the lake area shrank in the past ten years. Besides, Bosten Lake is the origin of the Peacock River, and the hydrological status of the lake is important for hydrological changes in thelower reaches. The paper analyzed the impact of regional climate change and human activities on the lake hydrological ecology in the late Holocene and further discussed the possible reasons for the extinction of Loulan culture. The paper also pointed out that the continued enhancement of human activities coupled with the warming climate will further increase the risk of eutrophication and salinization of freshwater lakes in the arid regions of northwest China in the future.
Figure 1 Schematic diagram of diatom and climate change at different stages of Bosten Lake since 2000
A brief biography of Dr. Luciane Fontana: He got his Ph.D. degree in biosciences from São Paulo State University in 2013. He once visited the Florida University, the University Paris VI, and the Urbino University. He mainly engaged in the study of diatom ecology and nitrogen isotopes in the tropics and has won several awards from the Brazilian government. During 2017.6–2017.9, he was sponsored by the Young Overseas High-level Talents Instruction Plan of the SAFEA to work with Professor Xiaozhong Huang. Luciane currently works at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC).
